Swinging the NinjaHammer!
by Zhelezo
Summary: Madara bit off more than he could chew, but Naruto and the gang aren't done for yet. They're entering a new world, with new gods, to kick some demonic backside! NarutoXWarhammer crossover, Konoha 11 reincarnated to try and topple the mighty hordes of chaos. Who will win? Who will die? Will other crossovers occur? Find out next now, as you read and review!
1. Is that a meteor?

"It's only one man! We can win this!" They came as an endless wave, thousands of men and woman, blades at the ready. They were the best of the best, the Jounin shinobi of the five great nations.

And he picked them apart like a bento box.

Those demonic red eyes the last sight many would ever see. With but a glimpse, men dropped to their knees, crippled by a web of hellish illusions that smashed their minds to pieces and reduced skilled warriors to quivering lumps. His fists moved like lightning, shattering anything they touched. Even armor was no protection, a glancing strike cut like the legendary Chidori of Hatake Kakashi. Skin, bone, steel, all of it gave way beneath a barrage of perfect strikes. His legs surged like tidal waves, cleaving through men no matter how many stood in his path. A trio rushed his unguarded back, hoping for a lucky strike. Praying for the good grace of Kami to guide their hands as they gave their lives for a single chance at wounding the demon before them. They carried swords, each blade a legendary edge, honed to perfection in countless battles, bathed in the staining red of human blood.

Then they fell away, each man cleanly bisected at the waist. Their swords shattered, their flak jackets pulped, shards of bone whistled away to land in the bloody sands. All killed with a single kick.

Madara Uchiha never even turned around. He had never felt so strong. So vibrant. Such power! It was euphoric. He had never felt anything close to this in life. He was immortal, all powerful, and a blasphemer of the highest order. The chakra of the underworld coursed throughout his veins, drinking deep of the Shinigami's power.

With a simple palm strike, he turned insides to jelly. With but a kick, he tore souls from the plans of petty gods, and cast them into the underworld.

The Shinigami was fuming. Madara could feel it's soul-rending eyes upon him.

He laughed, It could look all it wanted. He was unkillable. The Legendary Edo Tensei, a technique that mocked the gods and all their plans. Through his link to the underworld, he could even see their fates… Looming over their heads like butchers knives.

Madara crushed the throat of an Iwa shinobi, the man who would have gone on to marry the Tsuchikage's granddaughter. Had he lived, he would have brought Iwa to the forefront of trade, diplomacy, and peace. One blessed personally as a child by Ame-no-Uzume, Goddess of Dawn and Revelry, The Heavenly Female. He could hear her snarling in his ear, trying to force her way onto the mortal plane and end his existence.

"Now that's not very feminine." He whispered under his breath, and Uzume's divine efforts redoubled. There was something beautiful about taunting the gods. Madara carved through a half-dozen people to reach his target, a Kiri shinobi who looked ready to piss himself.

The son of a rice farmer, and a child prodigy in the shinobi arts. He was still unknown internationally due to the Kiri civil war, but this man would rise through the ranks before revealing an entirely new Kekkai Genkai. He would be the first of a generation, and his son would someday be Mizukage. The blessing of Hachiman, earned through years of backbreaking training.

Madara grabbed a handful of his hair, tearing his head off with a flick of the wrist. The god of war was howling in the underworld, raising a bloody ruckus.

The Shinigami sat there. Watching. Waiting for something.

"What are you waiting for, you decrepit band of blessings? You have nothing left. You cannot touch me. None of your chosen will ever survive to challenge me. I have toppled the gods. I am divine upon this plane of existence!" This he shouted, and it carried over the battlefield. The men around him, tired of being slaughtered, fell back to attempt a ranged attack. Their kunai, shuriken, and jutsu barrage was easily avoided.

But why should he dodge it? The fire jutsu's singed his flesh. The boulders broke against his skin. The water techniques soaked him. The lightning crackled onto his skin, before fading. The wind did nothing more than style his hair. Countless metal blades stuck out of his skin at every angle, but fell out when his immortal ash body healed.

"Do you see it now?! Do you know fear?! You cannot hurt me. You blades cannot scratch a god!" Madara weathered the storm of their attacks… But now he was bored. And a bored god is a dangerous foe.

"Y- you aren't a god!"

Spiral red eyes flickered towards the unfortunate speaker, trapping him in a gaze that promised naught but swift and painful death. The man was a Suna chunin, a man so far out of his depth that he was practically a sparrow at the bottom of the sea.

The blessing of Kuninotokotachi hung above him, and the young man wore it like a shroud. This was a man with the blessing of the Fate-Breaker. He had no future, no grand destiny. His destiny was his to wield, as whatever blade he wished. Even as Madara's murderous eyes stared him down, the young man felt… something. Something settled upon his shoulder like a comforting hand. He knew he had to keep speaking.

"The gods are powerful! So powerful that they would never kill everyone just so they could prove a point! You're just a frau-" A stone the size of a fingernail hit the young man's face at speeds nearing the laser techniques of Kumo. His head turned inside out, before it simply exploded.

Madara's red eyes scanned the crowd apathetically. "You were saying?" He gestured towards the corpse. "No no, I'm not going to interrupt you. Keep going. What was it you said about me?"

A plucky shinobi spoke up, this one bearing the blessing of Fujin. "He said you were a fraud!" Before the words had left his mouth, another stone tore through his skull.

"I am a god. I am divine. I am immortal. And if you do not fear me…" Madara looked around the crowd, his eyes now a ripple-marked purple. "Then I shall show you the true power of a god. You will all die before me!"

The cloud layer broke, and a massive shadow covered the battlefield. A meteorite surged forth from the skies, hurtling towards the earth. Larger than hokage monument, it covered the entire battlefield and all of the allied shinobi forces.

"FEEL MY WRATH!" Madara cried, his voice reaching the ears of every terrified shinobi. This was it! His moment of supreme victory! After this, nobody would ever again challenge his godhood! The world was his for the taki- "Shinigami? Why are you smiling. You don't smile."

The primordial god of death was grinning, showing off a massive maw of jagged teeth. But it said nothing.

"You can't smile. I've won. Don't you see? Your precious world is mine. You have lost. Give up. Scream. Cry. Shout. STOP SMILING!" He was raging at the grinning death god, but nothing was changing. "I will gut every single one of your worshippers. I will slaughter your blessed children. I will mock you in every nation of this pitiful world! YOU HAVE NOTHING I CANNOT TAKE FROM YOU!"

Then the death god moved. While the other gods cursed and raged and fumed at the human that was systematically destroying everything they held dear, only the god of death could see the truth. With a single bony finger, it pointed up.

With his Rinneagan activated, Madara looked up into the sky. The shadowed sky. Because of the meteorite about to impact the earth within the next few seconds. The one right on top of him.

10,000 tons of rock came screaming into the Earth, wreathed in fire as it hit the sandy desert. The Shinobi alliance was vaporized in an instant. The shockwave carried around the world, and the fires followed. The continent shook.

Madara, for all of his abilities, could only watch as his own Jutsu struck in slow motion. All the speed in the world could not save him from this. He saw the impact, as the fires spread, and felt his body burn away bit by bit. The heat turned the ash body into vapor, and the vapor into nothingness.

As the last part of his body burned away, he heard the voice of the Shinigami hissing in his ear, "I wonder what your liver tastes like… Well. We have all of time to find out, little god…"

BREAKBREAKBREAKBREAKBREAK

The fires spread across the continent, burning away any hope of life. The shinobi nations were torn apart, demolished, and utterly destroyed. It was an extinction level event. The world would never be the same, but life would always be stubborn. In the various ninja villages, countless civilian evacuation shelters remained intact, riddled with the last of humanity.

A final gift from Izanagi and Izanami. A final blessing. The meteor destroyed much, but even it's destructive impact could not claim everything. And thus, life went on for the people of the elemental nations. The lucky few. But there were hero's yet to be rewarded. Hero's that had given everything in their attempt to fix a mistake of the gods. And just as the Shinigami was due for a reckoning with the self-proclaimed god Madara Uchiha, so too did Amaterasu owe a reckoning to the human Hero's who lost their lives before they could even see the battle.

In a palace of gold in the highest peak of the skies, a smiling feminine face greeted a handful of the blessed. Those who had no chance of survival as close as they were to the impact, though they had never even seen the battlefield. Still unsure of what happened, they entered her palace, as she addressed their leader.

"Greetings… Naruto."

Her face was sculpted of the purest porcelain, lacking any blemish or mark. Her eyes were the stars, infinite and limitless, with a sense of infinite distance between them and those she saw. Robes of the richest colors adorned her bodies, and despite the manly urge to ogle a goddesses bust (Out of respect for his mentor of course!) Not one pair of eyes in the room could drop from her face.

An air of peace had covered the room when she spoke, and her bruised and bloody travelers dared not break it. The words of a goddess had a magic of their own. A magic that no human would rush to follow up. Anything they said would simply sound… Childish. Ignorant. Feeble-minded. In the face of a voice that carried an eternity of wisdom, a whistful sigh became the grandest of philosophical considerations.

They could have sat there in limbo forever. Her waiting for one brave enough to speak. The group waiting with eager hearts for the next sparkle of brilliance to slide free of those perfect lips. Fortunately, there was one man willing to look like the greatest fool in the world. A child of Kuninotokotachi.

"Er… Lady what are we doing here?! I've got to save everyone!" He was shouting at a goddess, to the distraught/horrified looks of his companions.

Amaterasu shook her head slowly. A cloud of dust was no way for one such as this to lose his life. She could feel the power pouring off the child. He could have been amazing. He could have changed the world. But in the face of such failure… Would he do it all again? That was the real question. Mulling over her next words evidently took too long for the impatient boy.

"Lady?! HEY! What are you doing?! Come on everyone, we have to go! Somebody has to stop…" His voice trailed away, after Kakashi set a hand on his shoulder. "Kakashi… No… You can't just give up. They need us…"

Another hand was set on his shoulder, this time the delicate hand of Hinata. The shy girl offered only a sad smile and words blurred by a choking sob. "It's o-okay N-naruto… You did your b-best."

Another soft hand, the fingertips calloused from countless games of Shogi touched his back. "It's troublesome, but true. You know what happened."

Kiba's hand, clawed fingertips and all, touched him. Shino's hand joined the others. Then Choji. Rock Lee. Neji. Ino. Tenten. Naruto looked around at all of them, as vertigo swirled about his head.

"No… Guys! We have to keep trying…" Sakura's fingertips covered his mouth, tears spilling down her eyes. "Naruto." She whispered, as a lone teardrop gathered on her chin before spiraling to the floor.

While the hearts around him shattered, Naruto could only look at the floor. He remembered the winds. The steaming, fiery, burning winds. He was the Kyuubi Jinchuuriki, the hardest being to kill in the entire elemental nations. He could still feel his nerves burning as they tried desperately to heal. Of course he knew he was dead. But if near-death hadn't stopped him before, why would death?

Tears spilled from his own eyes, joining the falling sorrows of his friends and companions. They had given up. Naruto could feel it. The loss, the sorrow, the tragedy, flowing off them like a fog. And it made him really damn angry.

"YOU!" He spun, pointing an accusing finger at Amaterasu. "YOU HEARTLESS BITCH! How could you let this happen?! All of this! These were good people! How could you just let things end like this! You murderer! You Monster! YOU DEMON!"

"Me." Amaterasu whispered, and her voice flowed like a comforting wind across the heartbroken band of shinobi. "This was not our plan for you Naruto. This was never our plan. You were to be… Well, it doesn't do any good now. What do you care what your future held. Let me get to the point-"

"NO WAY LADY!" And the fish hopped on the bait she had dangled. Amaterasu let a smile grace her perfect features, a smile that lessened the sorrows of those around her. "You have to tell me what happened! I need to know!"

Her chuckle carried the very warmth of the sun she embodied, and suddenly the sorrows of a tragic and fiery death melted away. "Of course, child of prophecy. Come here. All of you, come here. There are things I must share with you… As well as an opportunity, should you wish for it."

Naruto walked towards her, not intimidated by her massive golden throne and robes that spoke of endless wealth. Up close he realized that Amaterasu was a good bit taller than him, and that despite the dainty robes she met his eyes and gave him a friendly smile. She might be rich and all powerful (On this plane of existence anyways) but Naruto could tell that she was a down to earth person.

Amaterasu ran her fingers through his sunburst-yellow hair, and her eyes found distant visions of a past that should have been. "Oh Naruto... We had such great things in store for you. Such beautiful, wonderful, incredible things. A child, wisdom tempered in loneliness. Determination crafted from painful isolation. A dream, forever longing, never within your reach-"

Naruto felt something in the smile she gave him. Something beside the pleasant warmth that rolled off of her whenever she gave even the slightest inkling of happiness. It felt like the same warmth, only… Inside of his body. It was familiar. But where? Her fingers tangled his hair, drawing a reactive chuckle out of the warrior without equal. "Hey! Stop that, it tickles!"

"-Until you had already soared past it. Naruto. You could never be the Hokage."

In an instant his happiness had shriveled up and died. Just like his body on earth. Naruto's sad gaze began to fall, only stopped when pale fingers traced his chin, raising his head with an astonishing level of strength.

"Do not lose hope so quickly. The dreams of a child and the dreams of a man have many differences. In fact… You would marry the Hokage in your Twenty-Seventh year of age, after many long years of courtship. The love between the two of you had bloomed for many years, and it was only after bringing peace to the Elemental Nations that you could join in union without the power-base destabilizing. In fact, your love story would carry on for a thousand thousand years. Until even your name was forgotten, and all that remained was the simple story of the scared princess with a heart of steel, and the orphan boy with the sun in his heart."

In the corner, one Hyuuga Princess could feel her heart trying to beat out of her chest! But still the goddess spoke, and despite the heart-stopping news, she could not bear to ignore anything this fair woman said.

"You would never be Hokage. For the Hokage would rule Konoha. You were the Hinode-Kage. The leader of all touched by the sun. The first man to unify the Elemental Nations, and to keep them free from the dark taint of war."

Naruto found himself unable to speak. There was so much to say, but the words dried up within his mouth. The water stolen by tears now running along his whisker-marked cheeks. Not all of his party were suffering from the same mysterious "dust-in-my-eye" ailment though.

"WOOO! Go Naruto! Do you hear that?!" Kiba, ever the loudmouth, was cheering. Shikamaru gave a cool thumbs-up. Kakashi a trademarked eye-smile. Lee bent back, howling proudly about Naruto's ever expanding fires of youth! The rest were too dumbfounded to react.

Except for one lonely girl with pink hair, who had never felt so insignificant in her entire life. Who had lost the only man she had ever loved. And who found herself thinking, in the far-flung traitorous corners of her mind, that maybe Naruto wouldn't have been such a terrible leader.

"But the tale does not end there, young Shinobi. You did not think things would end so soon? No. You would travel the world, both body and shadow, seeing all their is to see. You would watch your children grow, always, and spoil them rotten. Some of them grew lazy. Others jealous. A few even resentful. And in the end, when they had gained their bruises and scars, their broken bones and lost comrades, you would welcome them back with open arms. You never forgot them. Not even one. Your descendants, for a thousand years would uphold your legacy, the Uzimaki name known far and wide once more.

Not for sealing. Or longevity. But for honesty. Fairness. Compassion and love. The most noble bloodline in all the land. Even when it was the poorest. A fine legacy. A legacy that anyone would gladly claim, correct?"

Blue eyes looked up at her, and the big beaming smile on Naruto's face could not be denied. But there was a burr in his heart. A problem that itched at him, until the smile faltered. The goddess was all to quick to spot it, and she waited patiently for Naruto to ask the question she had always known he would ask. Not from prophecy, or foretelling. But from a simple understanding of a human she had a unique fondness for.

"W-what happens to all of that now? The peace. The love. Dammit… The Elemental Nations would have been free from all this if I had just… My friends would still be ali-"

"IDIOT!" A slender fist struck his head from the side, knocking the tangled mop of blonde hair out of the goddesses fingers and sending him sliding across the floor. Naruto groaned, looking up at his fuming teammate as she cradled a hand with at least two broken knuckles.

"S-sakura? Why-" He looked into her eyes, the tear-stained, make-up dripping pools of endless sorrow, each carrying an intensity to rival even the hate-filled orbs of the 9 tailed demon fox.

"Because you're an idiot that's why! Oh boo-hoo-hoo! My friends wouldn't have died if I could just stop the most powerful jutsu ever created by anyone! How the hell were you supposed to stop that?! Stop blaming yourself for everything! Bad stuff happens from time to time! Learn to live with it, get over it, and stop crying onto Amateras-"

Her face turned from angry, to shocked, to scared, to horrified, to fearful, then back to shocked, in the time it took to blink. Sakura realized that she had just interrupted a moment between the Queen of the Gods and her chosen champion. Bowing immediately as the apologies tumbled free of her mouth, she retreated as fast as possible (While still being polite) and the mortified mortal decided then and there to remain silent and inactive for the rest of the meeting. Hopefully Amaterasu would forget to turn her into a pile of ash.

Naruto just laughed, hopping back up to his feet. "Thanks Sakura. I needed that. Now miss goddess lady-"

"Amaterasu O Mi Kami."

"Bless you, that's some cold you got. Anyways, lady." Naruto walked right up to her throne, sitting down right in front of it, and meeting her gaze perfectly. After all, he had experience staring down immortal gods with enough power to annihilate him with a stray fart. "What happens now?"

"Well…" She paused, looking straight into the fiery eyes of the young man before her. "That depends. On you, and your friends. You see, Madara was a fate-breaker. The chosen of Kuninotokotachi just as you were Naruto. A man of his own destiny, with the power to shape those of others. Then something happened. The powers he called upon were powers given to him by gods from another realm, eager to corrupt our world. Had he not killed himself with his own technique, he would currently be corrupting everything we have painstakingly created. We would like to strike back at these foul gods. Beings of chaos and murder, slaughter and death."

She set a hand upon Naruto's shoulder, and he could feel the determination flowing through her veins. "We gods do not have children Naruto. But we have the children we bless. They are ours, and we love them all the same. I have lost seven hundred and eighteen children today Naruto. I am hungry for my pound of flesh. I will take my pound of flesh." A discernible bloodthirst settled in her eyes, so fierce it actually made Naruto fairly uncomfortable. The rest of the rooms residents were sweating up a storm as divine killing intent cut through their bodies.

"This is not your problem Naruto. You have earned whichever afterlife you desire. All of you have. So! Without any other rambling from an old woman who let everyone down, what would you all like?" Stopping on a dime, the killing intent vanished, and her warmth returned.

As a whole, the group of shinobi took a moment, eyes connected for fleeting moments of silent agreement… And then they looked to Naruto.

A bemused Naruto, who had no idea why everyone was looking at him. "Uh… Guys? This is your afterlife. It's your choice. Tell her what you want."

Neji stepped forward, stopping a few feet from Naruto. "When you met me, I was a child blind with rage. I thought of nothing but murder. But through you, I have become the man I am today. A man leaps and bounds above my previous self. I cannot see everything, not even with these eyes. But if I could grow so much in a single lifetime of knowing you, imagine what I could do with a second? Where you go, I will follow. Not for revenge, but for friendship."

"YOSH! Never could I have said such youthful words! Neji, the flames of your youth are soaring high! I swear that mine shall rise to match them, or I will perform six-thousand one finger hand squats!"

"Troublesome. But I suppose anything's better than being dead. That sounds so troublesome…"

"Shikamaru, If you're going, I'm going. You still owe me a bag of chips, remember?"

"Really? We just got aced by a meteor and you're all ready for more? Well… I suppose somebody has to watch your backs… If I'm not around, who would watch Neji's blind spot?"

The Hyuuga visibly twitched at Tenten's pinpoint accurate words. Oh how he mourned his no-longer-a-secret shame. This afterlife could not possibly be more humiliating.

Until Naruto misheard. "What?! Neji's got a bald spot?!"

While Neji took his stoic fuming to an entirely new level of passive-aggressive glaring, another Hyuuga had already made her choice. She was about to loudly proclaim her support, when Kiba beat her to the punch.

"Yeah! Naruto, we're all with ya! Shino, Hinata and I. We'll follow you right into whatever world is next! Right guys?"

Hinata nodded slowly, sad that her moment had been lost. But Shino Aburame shook his head.

"I am not going with you. I cannot feel my Kikaichu. I need them back. In another world, I would have no chance at finding them again, and reincarnation is too risky. I will be rooting for you all. As much as I am able."

Nobody had ever heard Shino say that much, and for a moment they forgot about his words as they marveled at his speaking! Shino sounded… Surprisingly young. Like a ten year old boy. His characteristic gruff voice was gone, vanished now that his bugs were no longer living inside of his flesh. Then, all that he had said settled in on his companions.

Kiba suddenly realized what was wrong. "Hey wait a sec guys! Where's Akamaru?! Miss… God lady…"

A raised hand stopped him. "Fear not for your companion Kiba. For though he misses you, he is at peace in the land after-death." From her fingertips, a glowing field spread out. It filled their air with a rainbow of colors, before slowly clearing. Everyone could see a shining field of the greenest grass, full of butterflies and deer. The grass was tall, and in an instant, a trio of massive white canines had lunged out, rending the deer into so many fleshy lumps. Kiba recognized Akamaru, but also Hanakura and Toshi. All three were dogs from the Inuzuka kennels.

"See? Akamaru is at peace, joined by his brothers. All is well. All is happy. Kiba, if you so desire, you may live among them. Your families joined forever in the eternal hunt."

Kiba looked at the happy picture, Akamaru licking blood off of his muzzle, chewing on a massive chunk of deer antler. He looked so happy… "Are you kidding lady? I already told Naruto I'd go. So I'm going! I ain't just gonna leave my friends to fight on their own!"

Still, he did look at the image longingly.

Amaterasu snapped her fingers, and the vision stretched down to the floor. "Very well Kiba, I know your mind has been made. But you may visit until the time to depart arises. All of you will have the opportunity to say your goodbyes. Simply step through the field."

As Kiba left, Hinata looked towards Shino. "Are you sure you won't reconsider? We will both miss you Shino… You were a good friend. And a great teammate."

Reflective glasses hid the wetness of his eyes. "I am sure Hinata. You were one of the finest companions an Aburame could ever hope to find. But I could not become someone new. It terrifies me. I cannot conquer my fears a second time. Please forgive me."

Her arms wrapped around his shoulders, and Shino slowly moved his arms around her waist. The hug was awkward, but strangely comforting. "I understand Shino. Enjoy your eternity. Everyone understands…"

"Even Kiba. And that is saying something." Shino finished, a dry chuckle rolling off his tongue.

"Goodbye Shino. I will miss you, your bugs too. Tell them I said hello."

A shimmering portal opened in front of him, and the bug using shinobi walked through.

Amaterasu broke the silence that was rapidly settling over the gathered shinobi when she clapped her hands and thunder struck outside. "Well! Let me tell you all about what will happen. I'm sure there will be more of you who opt to join the afterlife, so do not finish your goodbyes just yet. Come closer children, and I shall tell you about the future…"

They crowded around her, breathing in the faintly spicy aroma of a goddess. The very air around her felt purer, and a spell of relaxation covered their bones as she began to speak-

"Oh! Before It slips my mind. Come back to us Kiba." The portal appeared above their heads, and the feral-looking ninja fell out onto the hard marble floor.

While only a few minutes had passed, to him it felt like days. He had visited Akamaru and his family, and scoured the endless hunting plains alongside his canine companion. A truer heaven could never be imagined, and yet… something was missing. There was no thrill. No risk of death. And without that, the endless hunt was just a children's game. In the end, Kiba was glad to leave, though he would always miss Akamaru. Falling hard on his ass was therefore, not what he expected. "GAH! OWWWW! What the, where tha- It's you. I shoulda known!"

"Yes you should have, now sit down and listen. You're all about to make a very dangerous decision." If there was one thing that could shut Kiba up, it was a promise of danger. Ignoring the bruise that would be forming on his backside, the feral ninja hopped to his feet and joined the Konoha 11. Now only ten.

"Now. Should you turn back there is no being in this world that will think less of you. Or your bravery. Or your sacrifice. You will not be called cowards. You have, and will always be, true heroes."

"Lady just get to the story!" Kiba, now wholly unaffected by the aura of wisdom hanging around the goddess, just wanted somebody to get to the damn point!

"Very well then. Madara Uchiha was a man of your world. A child of the gods even! But one fateful day he was tainted by a wicked magic that turned him into the monster that destroyed large swathes of the world. He was corrupted by divine magic…" With a wave of her hands, the image filled the air. A young Uchiha male, wearing standard warriors armor of red lamellar, crawling through the jungle as he desperately fled his pursuers. Then, his bleeding hand knocked a small bit of moss aside, exposing a strange runic marking. Instantly his black eyes swirled into life, the sharingan blazing evilly. The bloodbath that followed looked akin to a Jinchuuriki rampage.

The Konoha 10 looked pale, watching in horror as Madara tore through men with his bare hands. Sakura was shaking like a leaf. "S-so the sharingan came from those weird runes?!" All this time she had romanticized it. The eyes of Rikudo Sennin. A legend reborn. The truth was so much colder.

"Indeed. Magic from another world reacted with those of the UChiha bloodline, spreading this dark taint through their ranks. As blood was spilt, and brother turned on brother, the curse only grew more powerful. The Uchiha began to worship these evil deity's, and almost succeeded in bringing them here, if not for one fatal flaw…"

Naruto knew where this was going. "The Uchiha Massacre!" Or maybe he didn't.

"Not even close. Try two-hundred years before that. No, the Uchiha nobility, those with fully awakened Sharingan, grew too self confident. They rejected the very Gods who gave them power, believing themselves to be divinity. Their clan abandoned the dark beings that had made them great in the first place. There was a small resurgence until the Uchiha massacre stamped out the last embers of that cursed bloodline."

"The same Gods that so despoiled our world will do so to countless more, unless they are stopped. You ten, and a few of your lost comrades, will be sent back to the world of these Gods. You will inhabit new bodies, and destroy those monstrous deities from the ground up. For when they cast their power into this realm… They opened a portal that will only grow in time. If you do not stop these beings within One-Hundred years, they shall be free to send even more of their power into our realm, destroying any hope of peace these poor people could ever have."

"So, noble heroes. I ask you now. Will you cast aside the peace of the afterlife for a new life in a new world? Will you stamp out the seeds of evil that even now threaten the universe? Will you be the heroes you were destined to be?"

Naruto stepped forward, punching a fist into his hand. "Dattebayo!"

"You will receive new bodies, though your spirits remain the same. We believe in you, and know that you will succeed. Beware, the road ahead is dangerous… Take every opportunity you can. For the sake of every world hangs in the balance."

"Well what are you waiting for?! See you guys soon!" Naruto waved as his comrades, moments before the silver field enveloped them all.

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Chapter 1 Is off to a slow start! Potential remake of course, but who knows where my inspiration will take me? I have some ideas for characters, and where they would go, but I'm always happy to take suggestions! Criticisms and the like are also quite valued, though I rarely get ones beyond the standard, "You suk, kill yourself." Compliments are also happily read, though I prefer ones that actually mention what you think I've done well.

Emotional impact, particularly portraying every character, was understandably difficult. Let me know what you thought.


	2. The Awakening

CHAPTER 2

So I had a lot of fun with chapter 1. It was a little slow at times, a little weak at others, but I heard a lot of wonderful things about it. Hopefully you guys and gals will like this one just as much, if not a little more.

I do not own Naruto. If I did, it would be a mess. A consistent mess, but still a mess. None of that Uchiha nonsense though so… Improvement?

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As the rippling pool of silver engulfed them, their bodies were wreathed in white fire that stripped away their physical forms. Each of them carried certain things into the afterlife -temporary gifts from a grateful deity- now those gifts would have to be returned.

She felt her body fizzle away, as a ticklish tingle raced through her blood. It was like her entire body was carbonated, lifting away in a delightful swarm of colors and experiences. Every faded bruise a memory, every off-white scar a story.

Where are you going? She tried to ask as they fluttered away like so many bubbly butterflies. Only to find her lips were gone, and before she could decide how she felt about that, the last of her fleshy form had vanished.

You were a good body. I will miss you. She tried to say the words, but it was oddly difficult to talk when you were just a floating aura. Her spirit was a bit like a cloud, a shimmering patch of glowing goodness, just barely see-through.

She couldn't see, and yet the world seemed clear. There was nothing and still, she felt everything. Countless memories and feelings, hopes and dreams. Each a tangible object in her new way of looking.

It is all so beautiful. If only I could stay here.

"Indeed it is. Many have tried. But this is a place where the physical things we hold on to are left. Those precious moments that matter the most to us. Some have gone mad, just trying to hold on forever… Then eventually they move on. They forget, bit by bit. Until only their desire chains them to this realm. Even that vanishes eventually. It can be so easy to loose yourself in old memories, until you forget that new memories are just around the corner."

Amaterasu shook her head slowly, a sad smile playing at her lips. "Oh, but I did not mean to keep you. The other Gods and I were just giving your friends some parting words of wisdom."

Thank you. How odd. She did not feel so intimidated before Amaterasu. If anything, the godly aura around her felt almost… Mundane. So much less than the countless hopes and feelings she could see. Like a gray blot on a field of summer flowers.

"Not inaccurate, if a bit brash. We Gods live forever, and so we seem so very dim, here in the world of human connections. When you have all the time in the world, dreams are less Important. Hope is often a forgotten memory to one who knows fate. Or, at least, an array of likely destinies."

She would have blushed, if she still could. Mocking a goddess? What was she thinking! Oh this was Sasuke all over again!

"Fear not Ino, I took no offense. In fact, this Is why I came to speak with you in particular. You are unique among your friends."

I am not. I was not even the most impressive member of my team! Why would a goddess be interested in anything that had to do with me? I'm just… I'm just Ino. And that's all I will ever be.

"Oh Ino… You were never JUST anything. I always saw greatness in you, though you were waylaid for many years. You could be anything you ever wanted to be."

And yet… I was so mediocre! You saw that room of people, all of those powerful ninja. They barely even noticed me. Sakura didn't even notice me. Shikamaru and Choji, my teammates, didn't notice me.

I'll always be a wallflower.

The fingertips of a goddess graced the edge of her "body". Warmth driving away the cruel thoughts. "Do you know why I have come here Ino? Why I came to speak with you, out of all the ten? It was to warn you, but it was also… Well, why did you come?"

Why did I? I don't know. These people are my friends. I couldn't leave them. My teammates. Sakura. I will miss my family but- I'm not sure I ever really belonged with them. I was a failure.

"No Ino. You were lazy. You spent your youth chasing a heart that was already cold and black. Seeking love from one who could never feel it, neglecting everything that could have made you unique. That is why you came along. Because despite yourself, and your fears, and your failings. You want to try it all again."

I guess that does sound kind of nice. To start over fresh. To show my friends that I can be just as great as they are! To thrive in a new world with new dreams and new goals and do some good in the world! I want to leave my mark forever, so that everyone will always know INO WAS HERE. And when they see it, they'll sigh and wish they could do that. They will wish they could be like me.

"A grand dream Ino. But be careful. You had the least amount of combat experience before you died. When you are reborn you will have a new life. A new body. Perhaps even a new race… But no matter what, you can be great if you put your mind to it. I know you can."

The goddess leaned in, and her lips touched the elegant cloud of Ino's soul. The touch was fiery, beautiful and bright. Amaterasu blew gently, and for a bare instant Ino could see it.

A world overflowing with verdant green. A tapestry of life spread across the globe, with no ninja to trouble anyone. A world of peace, ruled by the sun and the moon that cycled endlessly, and the shimmering crown of gilding around it, the realm of the gods. In an instant, the breath ended, and the vision disappeared.

Ino could feel herself floating away, off to be reborn in a new body. Strangely, she felt no fear. Instead, she looked back towards the Goddess.

I thought you said that deity's didn't dream?

Amaterasu chuckled, a smile that carried all across her face. "Ino, you will be far away from your friends. Lost in a new land, in a new place. With new abilities. But I know that you can be great. You will make a great queen. Never lose what makes you special."

Then the world went white, and she knew no more.

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It was a time of Prophets and Omens. The chaos moon Morrsleib was at it's fullest, and the armies of chaos wantonly struck the lands of men. A thousand tribes were already seeking combat, dying with their Gods name on their tongues and powers untold in their veins.

Never before had so great a horde marched forth. The promise of glorious warfare, and the rewards that came with, drew countless thousands to the banner of the great warriors.

No less than a million barbarians marched towards the frontline. They had sat idle too long. The lands of men were too weak to stop this horde. Fear had kept them from joining the fight when the call first went out. Now that plunder seemed inevitable, every tribe was emptied. Every warrior of slight reknown. Every youth who hoped to earn a mutation. Every child who could lift a sword.

A swarm of carrion birds, sent to pick the lands of men apart. Their bodies decorated with bone chip-piercings and fetal-blood tattoos. On they came.

Only the weakest of women and the few elderly remained. Any man who stayed behind was one who damned their lineage forever. Some had to crawl out of their villages, slowed by broken legs or bloody wounds that refused to heal.

One million barbarian warriors surged forth to devour the world, but fewer than a thousand would reach the battlefield.

The chaos wastes are not a land for the weak. They are a place of fiery winds and biting sandstorms. Where water is worth more than gold and magic flows in the earth itself. There is no land more difficult to endure. No terrain harder to survive in. The barbarian tribes had evolved to survive as they did, carving out a pitiful existence of moss and rotting meat. They ate what they had too. They drank what they had too. They died as children, the weak and small to the gods, the hungry and sick to the elements. They died as men, fighting the beasts that called the chaos wastes their homes, fighting the other tribes that warred over every stretch of livable land. Dozens died for every palm of water.

When the armies marched, the great beasts fell silent. They hid within the caves and beneath the sands. Waiting for something they knew all too well.

The drum of feet.

The whisper of voices.

The iron tang of blood.

As the biting sandstorms stripped flesh from bone, and the barbarians were eaten by the wind, they pushed on. Admirably stubborn became Idiotically stupid as one after another lost their way, destined to become bleached bones littering the sands for future beings to find.

Kra'Shna was just one of the many barbarians. Wearing a necklace of human collarbones, and a loincloth made from tanned human flesh, he was one of the wealthiest members of the tribe. As a boy, his battle prowess was rewarded with a great blessing, and now he clutched it tight to his chest, praying that Khorne would see them out of this storm.

His left hand curled and slid open, moving like the rippling skin of a snake. Its surface was mottled with hard red bone, forming jagged clumping spikes that hung to his knees. In battle they drank down his enemies blood, growing larger with every shriveled corpse they left behind. A great blessing. The greatest of blessings. Even when they were small, weak weapons of no use in battle, they had earned him much favor. The finest clothes of wizard-hide. Slaanesh, to bless him in the bedroom. The finest ornaments of war-bones. Skulls belonged to Khorne, but the collars of enemy warriors were no less prestigious. Women. All the woman he could want… And his wants knew few limits.

So why had he left all of that behind for a chance at glory?

Kra'Shna blinked his eyes, fighting through the storm as a vicious wind ripped his forehead so violently that gleaming bone could be seen through the blood. Many of his tribe members had already fallen to the winds, and the few that remained fought for every foot. With grim determination he bit his cheek until salty iron blood filled his mouth, and Kra'Shna sucked it down hungrily.

They paused to decapitate a weakened warrior, now only 13 left of two-dozen. His skull was skinned, the muscles pulled away and eaten, the brains scattered in the sands. In the end, only a bloody skull remained, full of yellowed, misshapen teeth. They left it in the sand, carving the corpse into pieces for all. The man had a son, and the son ate his heart in three huge bites, barely pausing to chew.

Then they were off, their offering to Khorne made.

For hours they wandered the wastelands, sustained by the blood and meat of their clansman. But there was no safety in sight. All were praying to Khorne. Begging their god for salvation from the wind that would surely devour them all. They were the warriors of the war god! To die without ever seeing the greatest of battlefields would be a horrible fate for all.

As their prayers reached their zenith, and two more men were sacrificed, Kra'Shna spotted it. A hint of gray, far to the right. Gone so quickly he almost assumed it was just a desert hallucination. Barking an order the others barely heard, he led the eleven remaining men towards the one dash of color in an endless sandy wasteland.

Then they reached a mighty stone hill, with a single cavernous opening along the side. All cried out in rejoice at the sight. Khorne's name was on every tongue, and they built a pile of bones outside the cave, each man slicing his hand to add his own blood to the monument. Then they entered the cave, setting a cover of stiffened animal skins across the opening. The skins were cracked and scraped by the winds, each a mix of scales, feathers, fur and pustules. Nothing survived the wastelands without changing.

Someone made a fire, and began roasting the meat they still carried. More bones were piled for Khorne. More blood was spilt, and for the first time in days the barbarians began to boast again. Acts of devotion were performed, and the blood frenzy grew in every eye.

But Kha'Shna did not relax. He did not join the others in their joy. He did not cut his flesh alongside them, calling out in praise. He did not feast as they did. No. The blessed of Khorne sat in the deep shadows alongside the cavern walls, tapping the bony red spikes of his right hand along the wall. Drumming his misshapen fingers in a sensation he did not understand.

Something was bothering him. Something that could not be punched, stabbed, or eaten. This alone was strange.

Kha'Shna had survived for many seasons, fighting with every strange beast under the sun. He knew all of the cavern-dwelling beasts, and had sacrificed dozens.

Or so he thought. But these were not the beasts of his boyhood caverns. These were different lands, and each land had it's own uniquely horrible beasts.

The first set of twinkling teeth found his blessed hand, severing it at the wrist. The bony spikes crackled as they were eaten. A dozen more tore through his body before he could even draw his weapon.

Kha'Shna lay on the ground, feeling the phantom sensation of fist-sized chunks of his flesh vanishing as if they were happening to someone else. His eyes watched as the cavern shadows became countless small beasts, each with gaping maws of glittering teeth the size of fingers. He saw his men, devoured where they stood, too drunk off their war frenzy to run away. There were no sacrifices to be made. No grand battle to be fought.

A set of teeth took his left eye, and in a moment of complete apathy, Kha'Shna closed his remaining eye. Let the creatures feast upon him. There was only one thought he wanted as the life was torn from his body.

The thought of the woman he loved, now heavy with his child. Vulaxes, the star of his dreams. The blood in his veins.

As his thoughts turned to her, miles and miles and miles away, the battle for Praag was being lost. Arek Demonclaw was decapitated, his army scattering on the four winds to be slaughtered within days. The countless barbarians who left their homes in a desperate chase for glory, left for nothing. They would arrive, tattered, weary, and broken, just in time for the Kislev forces to close the pass into the chaos wastes, guarding it with hundreds of cavalry armed with short bows. One by one the tribes entered the fertile, life-giving lands. And like clockwork they charged, desperate for battle. The bows tore them down, and no matter their numbers, they could not catch horsemen. The demon blessed, the frenzied, even those wielding sorcerous powers, none of them survived. They died in droves, their bodies left to litter the fertile green lands. To survive hell unscathed, and be cut down in an instant by some jackass on a horse. Truly the chaos gods had a grand laugh on that day.

But that was not the only significant event of this moment. In this very instant, Vulaxes, the first wife of Kha'shna "Bloodclaw" died giving birth to a healthy young son.

A son who looked at the world around him with bright blue eyes.

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Around the world, Nine children opened their eyes. Nine children born at the exact same time, each in a different corner of the planet. Nine children with eyes full of life, and some would even say… Awareness.

Nine children. And only nine children. For even the plans of gods are not infallible, and sometimes dark magic draws fate of course. A single soul was lost, vanishing in the stormy spells of an ancient evil. An event that would shape the future forever.

The Gods of Order took note of these strange events, and knew that now was the time to act.

The Gods of Chaos took notice of nothing, as Arek Demonclaw's death and the loss of his army destroyed the power balance of the four, and three turned on the fourth in an instant. Tzeentch was without a champion, and had lost many ancient artifacts when Demonclaw's army was slaughtered.

Khorne had lost hundreds of thousands of barbarians, having sent many to the battlefield in a shrewd attempt to wrest victory from the jaws of Tzeentch. Now he was forced to pretend that all was as it had been before, when his true force had been hacked down to a sliver of what it was before.

So as Nurgle and Slaanesh devoured chunk after chunk of Tzeentch lands, Khorne was forced to marshal all the troops remaining in a shallow attempt to pretend the god of war was still at full fighting force. Naturally spearheading the attack on Tzeentch, Khorne absorbed more land than either of the others, pushing Tzeentch back in a series of brutal assaults lasting five years. Both sides suffered horrific losses, and many of the Khorne elite Chaos Warriors were killed in battle.

The war ended only when Nurgle and Slaanesh, jealously watching Khorne take the lions share of the profits, sprung their own trap. Simultaneous attacks were launched on Khorne, absorbing massive tracks of land in the space of a few months. Settling in to digest their new lands, Tzeentch took the chance to strike at the reeling Khorne, stealing back most of the land Khorne had originally stolen.

It was the largest inter-chaos war in the last thousand years, and the Chaos lords would not fully recover for many years.

END OF CHAPTER 2

So this was the end, shorter than the first, but heck! I like it. So I think we all know who the baby was, but can you guess which soul went missing? Doesn't matter! Next chapter you'll see!

This story will of course, focus on Naruto, but as you can tell, I will not be forgetting the other Shinobi! They're all important after all.

If there's something you want to see, let me know! If you don't like how I did something, say whatever it is, I'm always happy to see lore-based criticism! (Provided it's a valid comment based on the actual lore -pre age of sigmar because I cannot stand that noise-)

Also, for those of you who love the lore, and want to know when all this is happening, this takes place during the Gotrek and Felix novel "Demonslayer" by William King. This is one of my favorite Warhammer novels, and anything William King writes shall always be canon in my eyes! (This is where Arek Demonclaw comes from.)


	3. What's Everyone Up To?

Chapter 3

This is something I've been thinking about since the very first chapter. Despite all the thought I have put into it, I still have no clear answers. Should I introduce the others as children? Or focus entirely on Naruto until he encounters them across the course of his life? In the end, I decided to do a bit of both, to keep some of the mystery around your favorite characters/races.

If there is a character you want to see more of, let me know. I won't make any promises, but if a lot of people like a character I am more inclined to show them off.

On another note, If you have any unique ideas for magical items, feel free to submit them to me. The only requirement is that you give them a brief backstory (50-200 words) which details who made them, where they came from, and who found them. If I use the idea, you will of course be mentioned as the artifact creator. Also, if I like parts of an idea but not the entirety of it, I will use portions of the backstory and you will still receive credit.

I own as much of Naruto as I do Warhammer. So a lot of mini's, and some neat original ideas.

Final warning. Stuff gets dark this chapter.

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 _Excerpt From The Journals Of Ireteg Mokta Henhakah, The Eyes That Dwell In The Deepest Pool._

 _My memories of the life before this are hazy at the best of times. Often, I cannot remember the smallest of details. Faces and names are the worst, but even the simple things occasionally slip my mind. My childhood friends, the young Hyuuga that I once played with before the death of my father drove me down the devouring path of hatred. Once I remembered their names. I thought of them daily, wondering what my life would have been like If I had allowed them to comfort me when my father gave his life. Now, I cannot remember even the slightest detail about them. I remember only their existence, and know that soon, even that will fade from my mind._

 _I awoke to water, with a single image in my mind. Beneath ancient waters, my eyes opened and even in the muddy liquid I saw clear as day. I saw orange. The man I would always call friend. The one person I will always hold above all others, as a brother, as a companion, and as a standard to live up to. In the time before my death, I often wondered what my life could have been If he had only shown me the error of my ways a few years earlier._

 _Would I have cared about her feelings when they were growing? Could I have loved her, and could she have loved me? Or would things have simply fallen apart, driving a rift between us that all the youth in the world could not close. These thoughts still keep me awake at night._

 _I cannot imagine forgetting Him. The greatest shinobi to ever live. Naruto Uzumaki. I wish the same could be said for her. Forgetting her would be all too easy._

 _I would simply have to find her again, before that happened._

 _The water was comfortable around me, not cold as one would expect. It felt warm, and slightly thick, like chakra infused water. I could swim, but in those first moments, all I wanted to do was lie there and enjoy the invigorating fluids._

 _For hours I lay there, breathing underwater. Each breath filled my body with an exotic tingle, as if the air in my lungs was flowing through my veins. The strength of warmth filled my body, and though my eyes could see clearly, I did not care to look around._

 _Above me, through the murky scum-covered waters surface, a pair of shining stars appeared. Curiosity sparked a desire in my breast that I could not comprehend, and with a longing drink of the magical waters, I swam towards the surface. I swam for a long time. The longest time. The stars that had seemed but a few feet away now seemed miles apart. I swam the waters, as the pleasant warmth and invigorating touch vanished stroke by stroke, the waters growing colder._

 _A chill pierced my heart, desire to return to the deeper waters a suffocating hand around my mouth, dragging me back. But the stars shone above, and I knew what He would say if He was here._

 _I bit my mouth until the tang of iron arose, and used the pain to drown out the cold. Up and up and up I went, traveling in a world without time, without distance. Days. Weeks. Months. Years. All of these were beyond me. Only the two strange stars could draw me, and even then I would have faltered were it not for the Image of Him, cheering me on inside of my mind._

 _When I broke the surface, the air hit my lungs like a furnace. It was hot here, very hot. The waters harsh chill was soon forgotten, I could see the shoreline only a few feet away._

 _Outside of the waters, I could tell that it was morning. Mid-way to noon, though how I knew that was beyond my understanding at the time. I crawled to the shore, feeling rock and dirt beneath my feet, which gave way to an endless field of green. Moss covered the rocks. Grass covered the dirt. And from there… It was a world of trees._

 _My eyes caught the sight of movement in the bushes. Movement from extremely skilled pursuers. They were watching me. Hunting me. Chasing me._

 _It made me strangely angry._

 _I ran into the bushes, unarmed. Unequipped. I was naive. I was young. But I wanted to find my strange visitors. I wanted to discover where I was._

 _This is what I tell myself. In actuality, my new body was simply excited to have something to chase. My new muscles wanted to run. My new brain wanted to see all that was strange and wonderful. My new nose wanted to meet other Me's but Not-Me's. It could smell what they were, even though I was still just discovering the wonders of my body._

 _And so I chased them. For days we ran together, and I saw them in bits and pieces. A flash of snakelike skin. A glimpse of bright colors, fading into forest green the instant I noticed. They ran, and I ran. It remains one of my fondest memories, that first chase through the endless forest, just them and I, with no concerns of any kind._

 _At times I let them escape. At times they let me get close. I could have caught them several times, but all I wanted to do was smile and follow. They often left food for me. Scraps of meat from a large canopy bird with a long warbling call. Bits of dried strips from the local snakes. My body was happy._

 _One day, as the time neared dark, the forest fell away. The dozen I chased stopped suddenly, turning to face me. For the first time I could see them clearly, but my mind was taken in by the scene they stood before._

 _A mountain of gold, that was my first thought. Only later would I realize that it was a gigantic pyramid, surrounded by a bustling city and covered in fine gold engravings. It was the most beautiful sight I had ever seen, though my sights were not done yet._

 _The creatures before me stood only slightly shorter than me, dressed in all manner of fabrics and as colorful as the evening sun. Leather from a half-dozen different animals decorated their bodies, and feathers from countless birds had been made into elaborate -if simple- outfits. Designed to go around, or on top of, their blue-green frills. The frills were standing tall, and each of them looked at me with eyes of wariness._

 _I tried to speak, and the words came out in clicks and pops. Evidently they understood, because the frills dropped, and the dozen led me to the gates of the city. Massive walls, easily three times my height, each richly decorated with carvings. Every inch of the wall carried stories that I could have happily spent a lifetime exploring, but as the beings approached the wall, the grand gate slid open and we all entered the city of gold._

 _In the days that followed, I learned the name of the city, Oxytl, and the location of my birth. The lost city of Chupayotl. Sunken for centuries, the spawning pools lost. Only I had ever arose from the pools long thought abandoned by the Old Ones._

 _I learned the name of my race, and the beings that had led me on the wild chase to Oxytls' gilded gates. We were called… Lizardmen._

 _My Name Is Neji Hyuuga_

 _Saurus Of The Sunken Pool_

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In a sunken world, far from the lands of light, beasts with blood-red eyes scurried. The burrow was large, damp. Full of chirping skitter-things and chewy tiny-squishy trees. The former were delicious, but fast. Only the best of the young could eat them.

Except for one young Skaven, who stared at his small wire snare, and the struggling insect inside. A snap of his jaws, and the little creature was gone, the wire trap ready to be re-used.

It's tender flesh and crunchy shell filled the day-old Skavens stomach, soothing the hunger pangs that had been building for an hour.

The young rat yawned, showing off fearsome teeth caked in sticky green blood. Crawling into the pile of moss where the young rats slept, he lay awake, thinking things no Skaven had ever thought. For hours he wondered about the outside world, and the sights above. Then his stomach rumbled, his hunger worse than ever.

Crawling out of the comfy-soft bed, the Ratman looked around, before it's lips formed a crude shape, and words stuttered out.

"B-big bad. Bigger bad thing. Not many. Big bad, not many, not few." He scratched lazily at an ear, struggling to find the words he wanted in the limited Skaven language. "Danger. More, less."

This continued for several minutes, before the young rat stomped his feet on the floor, tail twitching in anger. The other rats were looking at him, wondering about the strange new clan-kin.

"Part tough. Part hard. Danger. Fear. Trouble. Trouble!" Grinning, he licked the last of the so-so tasty bug fluid off of his teeth, looking around the room with eyes that shone of wicked delight. "Good Good. Bad place. Some trouble."

As he set the little snare again, and snagged another of the fast moving insects, Shikamaru walked forward, snatching it up and chomping through the palm-sized bug. "Troublesome. Much troublesome."

Around the room, the other young rats watched in awe, some trying to copy the clever rope snare their broodmate had created. All of them knew, this was a rat to watch.

The smart ones were always the tastiest.

"Troublesome. Much-much troublesome."

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His eyes were dark. Dim and brown, the color of a sunken mining tunnel. This color was the pride and joy of his parents, and moments after his birth, when they first opened his parents toasted, each tossing back a flagon.

Yes, Yomud and Ruska were both proud parents. Their child had been born with eyes of the darkest earth, a sure sign of high blessings. A miner indeed! One of the dragon-deep miners for certain. Neither had ever imagined such a blessing falling on their humble home!

Yomud was tall, standing just under 5 feet. He could pass for a human if his shoulders weren't so broad. His eyes were a pale brown, the color of sand. The most common eye color in their lands, a jack-of-all-trades. He would never be a master, but through years of work Yomud had trained to become a skilled smith. His weapons were of the fifteenth highest quality in Darendugar! A proud boast for any Dwarf, and one well earned! But there was one prouder boast in his life.

Ruska. The short maiden with eyes of the fairest blue. Many had scorned her for her human eyes, eyes that would never see the true secrets of the earth far below. Eyes suited only for surface work. Eyes that scared off the numerous suitors she should have had, for fear that her weakness would pollute her lineage.

How wrong they were now! Ruska had become a merchant, a job of no high regard in dwarven society. She was treated as a lesser being, and would always be considered a lesser race, no matter how much she made. Her eyes had the habit of unnerving more than just Dwarves, and as the humans marveled at the strangely feminine color (Most humans still couldn't tell male dwarves from females, something that had led to more than a few grudges!) she robbed them blind as a cave bat!

Yes, Yomud was proud of two things in this life. His craft, and his wife. But now a third thing had been added to the list. A boy. A brilliant baby boy, destined for great things in the deepest corner of the darkened earth. He would need training of course, but that could wait a day or two!

"How does the name… Dor Dwer-ad sound?" It was a powerful name. A name that meant Deep Dweller in Rock. An old name. When dwarves ventured without fear into the darkened earth. When they did not fear the ratmen, or the goblins.

In Ruska's arms, the chubby child looked around with intelligent eyes. Eyes that saw the world clearly. He cooed a happy smile, as babies do, and grabbed his mothers finger with hands that would one day crush boulders.

"I think he likes it dear…" Ruska smiled at her child, staring into his captivating eyes. She had felt such shame for hers, the dark earthy color felt like a blessing from the gods themselves!

Yomud let out a warriors cheer, drawing two-dozen more cheers from the surrounding homes. "Dor Dwer-ad Is BORN! Let all orcs tremble in fear! Let the beastly vermin flee at the very mention of his name! He will dig new tunnels. He will build new things. He will make the land beneath the world safe once more, and pull the precious metals from the hands of all manner of fiend!"

With a shout, Yomud grabbed a tray of food, pressing it into the chubby fingers of his young son. "You are born Dor Dwer-ad! Eat your first meat! Drink your first drink! No son of mine will want for anything!"

Tiny baby hands clutched at a massive rack off ribs, and a small mouth took huge bites of the tender flesh, washing it down with a massive swig of mead.

Internally, Choji smiled. He already liked it here.

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"Kveldulf! Where have you been you little bastard?!" A shriek, as harsh as any banshee's. A face, as pale as a ghost, with the broken and brittle teeth of a zombie. Naruto's mother was calling for him again.

He was only six years old. Six painful, awful, horrible years. A childhood in Konoha, bearer of the Kyuubi edition, was no walk in the park. If he had to say anything, It sucked.

Life in the Chaos wastes put his old childhood to shame.

"Out." Was his one word reply, as Naruto stripped the sinew from a long scruffy hide. With his mother refusing to do any work, he was left to make any clothes he needed. Or weapons.

She had been pretty once. Oh how she loved to rub that in. Her loss in beauty was, like many things, his fault. It was his fault his father died. It was his fault her clothes were ratty. It was his fault they were poor. It was his fault the sun rose too early every morning.

Every bad thing that happened was his fault.

As the woman shouted a barrage of varied obscenities at him from the back of their two-room hut, Naruto ignored her. It was easy actually. Six years of the same often left one immune to any effect her words might have had on him.

Trusting her rambling to distract her, he left the hut without a sound. Naruto, called Kveldulf in this miserable life, wore a single fur loincloth. Something he had crudely stitched together by hand from whatever scraps his mother left behind. He had no weapons, nor would he make any. She would take anything he made, trading it for black-spotted mushrooms.

Several times, Naruto would leave a weapons cache outside of the village, but the chaos wastes were a land of nightmare and fantasy. Even the caves and tunnels around the village changed on a whim. His weapons always vanished, hours of hard work gone for nothing.

The village of Khorosgrog was a small gathering of sixteen families, living in ten huts made of long slate blocks, supported by piles of dried mud. Water was precious in this land. Worth more than gold. The house Naruto shared with his mother was the finest house in the village, made entirely out of dried mud on plant fibers.

His father had been a great warrior, blessed by chaos. She always liked to remind him of that. With his father dead, and most of the village men gone, there was simply nobody left to keep back the hazards of the caves. Chaos goblins were growing in numbers, and if nobody culled them quickly, they would eventually destroy the entire village.

As it was, they kept busy by nabbing the occasional villager. Particularly children. Girls if they could manage it. Chaos Goblins were monstrous creatures. Diseased, lustful, barbaric, and smart, they embodied the worst of all chaos in a slender body just slightly taller than Naruto's own.

Sometimes he prayed for the victims the disgusting beasts took. But never to the foul gods of this land. His mother wanted him to worship Khorne, as all the villagers did. As his father had.

He hated the monstrous god. Ever since he had first seen the piles of skulls stashed around the village he had hated the foul monster more than even the chaos goblins.

Naruto ignored his neighbors, and the other village children. The families typically had many children, and any time visitors came the village fell into a slaanesh style orgy. More children meant more sons, after all. Sons to fight for the village. Daughters to create more sons.

The village was starving, trying to support almost thirty children. Two old men remained, each too weak to move. There was talk of sacrificing them any day now, only put off because they performed the ceremonial rituals. Two-dozen women, each struggling to provide their families with food while avoiding the wasteland hazards.

Naruto left the stone walls of the village, ignoring the many skulls hanging of them. He wandered up to the caves, climbing above the circular entrances. He picked up a large rock bashing it against the others. The shale cut his fingers, and blood ran down the surface.

Looking at the crude knife, he could only sigh. Even chaos goblins had better tools than this! Not for the first time, Naruto considered slitting his mother's throat. Only the last shreds of his morality stayed his hand.

"If I do it… I'm just like them." Killing to save himself, or another? Sure! No problem. He was not so naive as to think everyone was deserving of life. The last six years had beaten that out of him. But he would not kill for pleasure. He would not kill just for the sake of convenience. That was a step he had sworn never to take.

Clutching the makeshift knife in a strip of hide, he dropped into the deep shadows of the cave system. A pile of rancid shit lay at the entrance, scraps of bone riddled through the lumpy brown sludge. Chaos Goblin territory markings.

Naruto ignored it, slinking down through the caves. When he was far enough in, he huddled into a small alcove near the wall, and picking up a loose rock, he threw it at the entrance.

"CLACK- claaack- claaaack… clack" The sound echoed down the caves. With patience born from experience, Naruto waited, his knuckles white where they clutched the fragile knife.

"Skrakza?" A goblin wandered forward, lazily scratching a distended gut. The creature was just over three feet tall, its arms long enough to scrape the ground. Teeth stuck out of its lips, growing in razor sharp circular clusters of five or six. Beady yellow eyes scanned the dark, squinting to see through the light of the cave entrance. A deformed nose took up large chunks of its face, bulbous and warped, as if someone had grabbed the nose and used it to swirl the monsters face.

Bright red boils covered the goblins stomach, and several burst beneath its mangled fingernails, smearing grey-green pus around. If there was any more revolting sight, Naruto had never seen one. But this was not his first time hunting chaos goblins.

The creature moved forward, investigating the noise. The smell of sewage and rotten flesh filled his nose, and he almost gagged. This one was by far the most vile. It stopped by the territory marker, looked around for a moment, and finally turned to leave.

Naruto's slate knife caught the creature in the throat, cutting through the diseased skin with ease. Pus gushed out over his hand, rancid white fluid caking his fingers even as he pushed harder on the knife, cutting into the throat and stopping the creatures death throes. The shale edge snapped off in his hands, sticking in the twitching throat.

It shit itself as it died, a scent that Naruto no longer even noticed. Instead he just looked at the white pus caking his fingers, before wiping it off on his loincloth. Honestly he just wished these things died more easily. But with a long sigh, he grabbed the creatures least disgusting looking hand, and dragged it out into the hot sun, out of sight of the cave entrance. By nightfall the body would be gone, devoured by wasteland denizens who could actually stomach the corrupted flesh.

Naruto didn't care. He wandered back into the cave. Sometimes the goblins had weapons. Or armor. Sometimes he got really lucky and they had food! If this one hadn't been so diseased he would have searched it for items.

Ignoring the bloodstains from the creature he killed, Naruto wandered into the cave system. With the guard taken out, the goblins were fairly disorganized, usually just hunting in the caves or playing with their treasure. But if he couldn't find at least a cave rat or two, Naruto knew he would be starving for the next few days.

Down the stone passageways he wandered. Two sleeping goblins lay next to a makeshift guard post, but with his weapon broken, the boy ignored them.

Further he went, looking for any kind of weapon, or tool, or sign. The goblin caves changed every time he entered them. The plus side? The goblins never knew to expect him. The downside though, was that he never knew just how far the caves went.

Then he saw it. A hanging oil lantern, already lit. That alone would be worth a fortune back home! He could hide it from his mother, trade it to one of the elders and earn enough food and water for a few days. Maybe even a week, if he bargained well.

He went to snatch it off the wall, giddy with excitement, when he heard a squelching sound. Knowing he should take what he could get, Naruto knew he should ignore it, take the lantern and run. The few remaining bits of hero in his body stopped him from doing that. Instead, Naruto looked around the corner and gasped at what he saw.

One of the girls from the village had been taken just a few short days ago. One of the goblins was using her. Naruto cursed himself for looking. There was only one goblin, but he was unarmed! What was he supposed to do.

He sat down on the ground, sitting in the light of the lantern as he thought. There weren't any tools here that might help him. An instinct in his body cried out for him to save the girl, but he crushed it. He would die. He couldn't die, he still had to save the world. A heavy sigh left his mouth.

This was a lot of pressure for a six year old. Or a mental 20 year old. He could hear the girl being raped in the background, and it didn't make thinking any easier. Frustrated by the entire situation, he banged his head against the wall, and the lantern shook, casting light and shadow all around the hall.

Naruto stopped. He looked up at the lantern, his source of food for a week. His resource. His survival. He looked at it and bit down a groan, knowing exactly what he was going to do.

The goblin was enjoying itself, playing with the human they had captured only a few moons ago. It's peak was rapidly approaching, and it hissed as it's hips sped up. Suddenly a heavy metal plate smashed it's skull into three different pieces and the corrupted creature died on top of its victim. Oil splattered onto the broken head, mingling with shards of glass.

Naruto ditched the broken lantern and poked the girl, hoping for a response. He got a shallow moan. He prodded her cheek, and she turned towards him and sucked his finger. Finally he slapped her, and glazed eyes opened without fully seeing the world.

"Can you walk?" He asked. Already he could hear other goblins wandering nearby. If the cave woke up, then he would never make it out alive. He would probably end up like the girl. Or like the pile of shit and bone chips he passed at the cave entrance. So as much as he would like to give her time to adjust, he just didn't have the chance.

She nodded, slowly. Then she pushed off the rotting goblin corpse, and stood on two shake legs. Naruto could see thick bands of red infection spreading from dozens of scratches all across her body. The sight was still enough to make him grimace.

In a near catatonic state, the girl walked where he lead her. Her feet had stepped in the broken glass, and she left bloody footprints with each step. If she even noticed the pain, she gave no indication. Naruto led her out of there as quickly as he could, bringing her back to his village and her family.

She was traumatized, but he knew that in time she would see the world again. Her body would recover from the infection, and her mind would recover from the rape. She would go on to live an average life, have some kids, and put the entire trauma behind her. He knew she could do it. When he left her with her mother and sister, he was smiling.

Two days later her skull was hanging on the stone gates.

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So the end of chapter three! We finally see how things are going in the wide wide world of warhammer! The Chaos Goblins were just something I made up, basically goblins decayed and destroyed by the winds of chaos. Half-goblin, half-demon. Easy enough to kill, but dangerous in numbers.

So we saw what Neji, Shikamaru and Choji are doing, and the first few years of Naruto's life! Let me know what you think.

And if you ask "Why did the barbarians kill the girl" don't expect me not to look at you like you're an idiot. They sacrifice people for fun. She was traumatized, incapable of work. That's all the reason they need to kill her. Anyone who is useless they will happily sacrifice.


	4. WE GO TO WAAAAAAAR!

Chapter 4

Ah, the beloved Chapted 4! Here already. This is where things start to pick up, where the heroes and villains of the future carve out there place in the world. Trials will appear. The Chaos Gods are weakened, but they are far from lost… And as we all know, the moment Chaos was broken beneath the walls of Praag, the warriors of humanity gleefully returned to slaughtering each other.

Heroes will rise. Demons will rise. A lot of rising will happen, is my general point. Like a bakery. Or a Viagra testing facility. That's how much rising.

I do not own Naruto or Warhammer. Except in the earth varient #1333762485, where I own both. Great place. The world is on fire, and aliens have enslaved/eaten 98% of humanity, but I sit in an abandoned basement, looking at the models featuring only slightly fewer skulls than the world around me and the manga I drew on sheets of toilet paper, thinking "I could totally sell these to someone. Oh wait, they're dead."

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Naruto walked into his village. His armor was covered in chips and scrapes, and the shortsword in his belt loop was dripping with blood. He carried a brown-grey sack over his shoulder, and a roll of scaled skin beneath his arm. The skin was still wet to the touch, and it slithered and shook as the last touches of life left it.

Two years had passed since the unnamed girl was killed. Naruto never learned her name because nobody ever spoke it. Even her family had taken to pretending like she had never existed. Only a sad pile of bones at the foot of the wall left even the slightest clue that she had ever even existed.

In the village, six new families had joined, and the children were beginning their training. A handful of men now populated the village, several coming in from the new families, while a few of the children had finally reached the ambiguous age of man-hood. As Naruto entered he could see three of the more skilled men training the teenagers in the ways of combat.

He scoffed. What they called training, he called swinging a sword as fast and hard as you could. The adults beat the kids to toughen them up, and left the rest to time and combat experience.

Still, it was none of his business, so he ignored it. Those men had each offered to train him, after hearing how a six-year old raided a chaos goblin cave. Fact of the matter was, he had much better things to do.

"Azalk. You in there you lazy old man?" One of the village elders had been sacrificed the year before. Azalk was probably going to be killed sometime in the next year or so. Sooner if the weather turned bad.

Naruto eyed him warily as the elder left his little hut. The man walked with a stooped hunch, his curly white beard hanging halfway down his chest. Only the slightest cloud-like tufts of hair remained on his head. In all ways, Azalk seemed like a normal old man. A little like Hiruzen actually.

Keeping his guard up, Naruto dropped the thick roll of still-living leather on the floor. "It's fresh. What do you want for the work." A man did not live to be old in the Chaos Wastes just by being lucky. Azalk had knowledge and skills, both more valuable than gold. He knew the beasts of the Khorn landscapes, and how to make things with his hands.

This was the only man Naruto ever considered learning from. But no matter how many skulls he offered, the old man refused him. He would not pass on the secrets of leatherworking.

Azalk stroked his beard with a lazy hand. "This is all for that shield huh? Six skulls for payment. Two large stones, five fist sized rocks, and four goblin spines for the materials."

Now Naruto had no idea how a man could make a shield out of goblin spines and rock, but Azalk had never lied to him before. He dropped the sack, and almost a dozen goblin heads spilled out onto the floor. Shaking out his bag, Naruto started heading out of the village.

"I'll be back soon Old man. Try not to die before I get my shield."

"There's life in these old bones yet. Just you watch, I'll still be kicking long after you're dead and gone." The two shared a laugh, and Naruto left Azalk to his work.

"One of these days… One day I'm going to find something to make him teach me." Naruto made the promise under his breath. He had already spent too much time stagnating. He needed to find his way to the lands of men, far across the chaos wastes. There he could meet up with his friends, and join an army that wasn't made up of the lost and damned.

As he was leaving the village, he saw her.

A year younger than he was, she was someone he had seen many times before, but never spoken to. She smiled, walking alongside him as they went towards the gates. A cherubic face beneath short black hair, set with piercing stone-grey eyes. Wearing a sand-colored shrift that hung down to her knees, she looked the very picture of childhood innocence.

Naruto knew better than to fall for that here. In this village, everything was a threat and the sweeter things were the more they wanted to kill you. They didn't speak a word as they walked, him tensely striding forward with a hand on his sword, her happily skipping. When they reached the gates she stopped, looking at him, then at the ground, before she pressed something into his hand and ran off into the village.

He sat there, holding the pearl white skull of a rat as she ran off. "I hate this fucking village."

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It was a land of darkness, ruled by eternal shadows. But Choji no longer needed light to see, he could see in the darkest shadow and spot the gleam of metals no matter how they tried to hide. He lived the live of a miner, the eternal metronome of a pickaxe swinging up and down, cut by peaceful moments of tunnel searching when one vein was tapped out.

His mining team worked around him, each dwarf flowing with their own rhythm. The smack of the pick, the scrape of the shovel, the squeak of the cart, everything had a song inside of it. The deep dwarves understood this, and as the day wore on, rich baritone voices began to sing out.

Singing the songs of the tunnels.

When there were Ratmen around every corner, the tunnel songs gave strength. When the battle line began to falter, the tunnel songs gave courage. When reinforcements arrived in time to save the day, the tunnel songs gave the tired warriors new strength to carry on and crush one more of the filthy vermin.

Choji had yet to see battle, and he was grateful for that. The Skaven had been sniffing around their old tunnels. Several had needed to be bricked over to make sure none of the vicious little beasts got any ideas.

"Dor Dwer-ad! Give us a song!" One of the other mining dwarves called down the tunnel, and a dozen seconding voices cheered him on.

Yes, it was said that Choji had been born with many gifts. A powerful name, for one. The eyes of greatness, wealth, and skill. And a rumbling voice, as deep as the mountains and richer than any gold mine. His voice carried through the tunnels for miles in every direction.

"Ya want a song huh?" Choji asked with a grin, leaning on his pickaxe. "Here's one about a dwarf I knew, went adventurin for a loooong time. But me throats AWFUL parched, I dunnae think I can sing it without some good stout to wash the dust out."

Cheers went up through the tunnels, and a flagon quickly found it's way into his hands. Choji quaffed it down in one fell swoop, letting out a booming burp afterwards. "Good stuff! The best of the best! Is that yours Gelgar? I guess the rumors about your little gold vein were true after all. Well the best of luck to the best of Dwarves!"

Another cheer rose, as the many miners took a small break. Ale was poured, lunches were eaten, and the entire mine went quiet as a vampire's bedroom. "Now I think I promised you lads a song! Hows about 'The Tale of Shik-Maru' Ah got a feelin in me bones ye're gonna like this!"

His hand started tapping the head of his pickaxe on the hard stone floor. A gentle tempo forming. The other Dwarves were quick to pick up on it, and soon dozens of mining tools rapped out the same steady beat.

The song came from a place deep inside of him, resonating up from his bones. He hardly even needed to think about the lyrics, as he sang of his adventures with his team in that time a lifetime ago. It exploded forth, like the torrent of a raging river, flowing so fast he barely even heard the words as they left his lips.

For many minutes he sang, wasting the midday break several times over, but not a single Dwarf stopped him. He sang of his companions, the lazy trickster dwarf Shik-Maru, the elf-girl with golden hair who declared herself the leader, and the food loving Dwarf Kogi, all following the caravaneer human Ash-face who always smoked strange plants from faraway lands.

In the beginning he sang of fear and friends, how the four met along an endless dirt road, joining the caravan to serve as protection against the monsters of a strange land. Then the tune became one of growth, as each learned what it was that made them unique. The elf maiden, struggling to find strength when her kind was so inherently weak. The lazy dwarf, trying to keep what he cared about the most without working too hard. The food dwarf, who had grown content with his companions and was constantly scared of letting them down. And the human, wise in the ways of the world and happy to take on such varied company. A man who saw only the heart of his friends, not their blood or looks.

Then the story turned sour, as a vampire encountered the caravan. A vampire aided by a powerful necromancer who attacked the guards with conjured beings with metallic skin and human hearts beating inside their chests. Ash-face drew a sword, as the vampire approached and it turned out that he was skilled in combat. Faster than an elf, stronger than a dwarf, he fought the vampire to a standstill on that dusty dirt road. But the undead used foul magic, and had eaten so many lives that its body repaired every injury. Ash-Face grew tired, and the vampire hacked off his head.

In the end, Ash-Face never needed guards. He just wanted some company.

The pick drumming took on a sad, somber tone. The mournful pace of a funeral hymn. Some of the dwarves had to wipe tears from their eyes.

Choji told them how Ash-Face had the last laugh, burning the caravan and all the goods inside before his death. The undead could get nothing, and in the thick smoke the elf and two dwarves escaped.

Once more the story picked up it's pacing. The three heroes trained like they had never trained before, hiding in the woods by that forgotten road. They found their inner strengths, training and growing until they were each skilled in their own fields.

Then the trickster dwarf found the vampire's lair. While the dwarf and the elf distracted the necromancer, he slew the vampire in single combat, burning it's body until nothing remained but ash before scattering the ash on the four winds.

Then the three of them killed the necromancer, putting his head on a pike in honor of their victory.

Finally the story trailed off. Choji stopped singing as the emotion took it's toll. He never should have brought up Asuma and Ino. Dwarves were not fond of non-dwarves in their stories. They likely would see him completely different now, judging him as an elf-sympathizer.

Choji sat in the silent cave, waiting for something. Anything.

All he heard was silence. As if the entire world had melted away during his song. Then the voice came. "So… What happens next?!"

And the rest. "Oi! What happens to da three!?"

"An elf learnin ta fight like a real warrior! I don't believe it!"

"Now that's a dwarf who settles his grudges!"

One of the dwarves set a hand on Choji's shoulder. "Boy. You got a gift there. A gift from the gods themselves. A verse of that song is worth a sack of gold." And just like that Choji found his hands full of money.

"You'll tell us more soon, right?"

"Aye, with a song like that, I could mine for days!"

Choji smiled, glad that his companions enjoyed his song. A song that had carried further down the tunnels than he intended it to.

Miles away, deep down in the darkness, furry ears twitched as they heard the last echoes of the song. Eyes opened in the darkness, and jagged teeth pulled back in a crooked smile.

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"We go to war!" Stomp. Stomp. Stomp. Heavy footsteps shook the earth.

Fun fact, did you know the Hyuuga love to gamble? It's a sport within the clan, dating back to their founding. Long before they were the stuck up elitist prudes they eventually became, they were a band of rough and tumble warriors who fought hard, drank hard, and gambled the hardest.

In the years before the first Hokage, there was a saying, "The eyes are the only organ a Hyuuga won't bet." When they settled down in a tribe with the Manriki and Gusari warrior bands, forming one of the nine primary powers that would eventually unite to form the Land of Fire, the Hyuuga had to stop their impulsive gambling.

At this point, they became the elite of the elite, the finest warriors in the land. They adopted the same elitist mentality, and an even tighter lock was placed on the gambling. It became a nobleman's past-time, and a training game. Who could see fate itself?

"We go to fight!" Smash. Smash. Smash. Massive bodies shattered every tree in the way.

Neji had been prodigious in this game as well, though his time was mostly spent training. His only experience was before his father died, several years of successful gambling against even the finest Hyuuga. He learned the tells and tricks to a T, and only his father never lost a hand to him. Needless to say, in the Hyuuga clan gambling dens, it was only cheating if your opponent could see how you did it.

But the most important lesson Neji learned was the all-important bet. When do you go all in?

"We will smash them! We will crush them! Our lands shall be ours again, and these diseased things will never touch our land again!" A roar filled the air, sending every animal in a mile scurrying for safety. Ten-thousand reptilian roars followed it.

Neji stood at the head of an army. His new body was easily eight feet tall, rippling with sleek reptilian muscles and covered in stone-hard scales. In one hand he held a brutal weapon, a three foot long stone club with teeth attached along the length of the blade. Teeth from dozens of native creatures, many unbelievably poisonous. Some needle-thin, some as wide as a finger and razor-sharp. In his other hand a spear was strapped to his forearm. Made of the elongated forearm bone of a massive jungle beast, it was sharpened into a brutal point.

A pack of Carnosaurs stood on his right, the lead dinosaur lazily chewing on a jungle bird that got too close. Their eyes were cold and intelligent, and the leader looked him straight in the eyes as it sunk its teeth deep into the animals chest, splattering its mouth with blood.

On his left, hundreds of skinks vanished into the forest. Each of the warriors barely came up to his hips, but the darts they carried dripped with lethal toxins, and the blowguns were masters of silent killing.

A legion of Saurus followed him, many marked with a blood-red palm print. These were the legendary warriors of the sunken world, who Neji had blessed personally with his own blood and a touch of magic. Spears and shields looked far less intimidating that the thousands of carnivorous warriors.

Behind them, the real threats marched. Dozens and dozens of Kroxigor. Warriors as tall as he was, with gigantic clubs. Each of them was marked with his bloody clawed hand-print, over one eye or on the top of their head. Each looked around the forest with eager eyes, craving the coming battle. Their cold-blood was running warm today!

On came the war-beasts, massive dinosaurs carrying warriors, weapons, and magical support items. Their bellowing roars sounded the call to fight, and their skin was so thick that a sword would struggle to even scratch it.

Neji looked over the army. He had set off from his home city with two dozen Saurus and a handful of Skinks. But the call to battle and the promise of driving out the disgusting invaders had turned his rag-tag band into a bloodthirsty swarm. He hoped the Skaven could put up some kind of fight…

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End of Chapter 4! So I had some writer's block here, still not sure how I feel about Choji's song, but it served a purpose so there's that. I know I'm a few days late getting this out, but I've got a chem test today, so things have been a little hectic.

Hopefully next chapter comes out this weekend. Goddamn I can't wait to write clan wars!

So yeah, since I am putting together a war, I'm going to request one of three things from my oh-so-brilliant readers. Give me any of them and you shall be mentioned next chapter.

A)A clan Pestilens army list. All clan Pestilens (Pre-age of sigmar, so no verminlords, anything else is good to go though. Approximately 10,000 points or so, make it whatever you want though!

B) Lizardmen and Skaven heroes! The bravest of the brave, the boldest of the bold! Give me an approximate statline if you want to see your character in this war!

C) Magical items. Rings, swords, shields, amulets, fake glass eyes, I simply do not care. Give me anything and everything you've got!


	5. Three Hello's to a Stranger

Chapter 5

I have been away for FAR too long! Oh blessed readers, how it warms my heart to greet you once again! Tests, papers, and all manner of assorted college shenanigans have conspired to prevent me from writing my next chapter in a timely manner, but now, here it is!

Is it worse to be consistently meh? Or to be fantastic, yet decay into piles of rotting garbage? I'm not entirely sure, but Masashi Kishimoto and Games Workshop can sure tell you a lot about the latter. I own dozens of OC's, and several of the ideas in this story, but none of the content it is based upon.

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Her fingers were a blur, faster than lightning. He was taller than her, so she stepped into his guard, jabbing his wrist with her pointer and middle finger. She felt the muscle spasm, and with a pained yelp, he dropped the sword. Her right hand came up, clutching a rock the size of her fist as she drove it hard into the space between his legs. Armor crumpled, and she felt two small pops before her foe collapsed.

He was disarmed, lying on the ground and clutching equipment that would never function again. Helpless. Defenceless. As weak as a human for the first time in a century and a half of life.

She drove the rock into his skull again, and again, and again. She pummeled his head until gray globs of brain matter coated her fist, and the rock was firmly lodged in the skull of her enemy. Her hand bled freely from a dozen scrapes where the jagged pieces of skull had caught her skin.

Then she dropped the rock on the ground, picked up the dropped sword, and looked at the remaining dark elves. A handful of Dark Elves who just watched their commander brutally cut down by an eight year old girl.

Hyuuga Hinata smiled, an angel with specks of blood clinging to her face. She gave them no quarter, though they asked as often as they could. With each companion cut down in a horribly gruesome manner, the remaining voices grew more and more fearful. Desperately they struggled to match her in combat, only to lose fingers and hands to that lightning quick blade.

They tried to run, and she cut their ankles. One by one they fell before her. Crying, pleading, begging they offered her everything if she would only let them live. She grabbed them by the hair, cutting throats with a single clean swipe. A swipe that went down to the bone, and then further. Elven steel hewing through bone with ease, even in the hands of a child.

She worked through the night, and in the morning a handful of dark-elves were bound to their own banner-poles by the flayed skin of their bodies. The lucky ones had died during the night, but her prodigious skill with a blade ensured that the number of lucky ones was pleasantly low.

When Dark-Elf fleets sailed by, they would see the rotting bodies of their comrades, some still alive even weeks later, and they would know that this was NOT an easy target for their slaving voyages.

If they looked closely, they might still see her form, sitting on the sandy beach. Blonde hair carrying down her back, splaying out in the soft sands, the tips dyed red with Dark elf blood that stained the sands around her. Until the bodies became bones, she would sit there for hours every day, talking to the air.

Dark Elves called her "The Untouched Maiden" because no blade had ever touched her. None even came close. She made the fastest of elves look like… a dwarf. In Dark Elf lands, she was the grandest of prizes, lusted after from afar by every member of the Druchii noble class. It is said that a single strand of her hair is worth a thousand slaves.

If one of the Dark Elves were brave enough to get close to her, they could see that she was not simply talking to the air. She was talking to a small, emerald green form in her palm. A jade beetle. Common insects, which change colors with the leaves and often find homes near the elves.

"Drink up, little one. You have travelled such a long way." The beetle drank from a pool of blood in her hand, for despite their bright coloration, the Jade beetle fed on blood. Hinata fed the beetle, and the dozens that joined it, all the while talking to the little bugs.

"I miss you Shino. I hope things are going well. This world is… Strange. But not unpleasant. I even… Enjoy it, at times. The other elves don't like me, I think I scare them." She laughed, a bright and happy sound that sent the beetles scattering away on the breeze. Emerald wings danced through the air around her, before they settled again on her hand. "I was always so scared Shino. I didn't want to hurt anyone, there were so many good people in the last world. Every time I fought, I could picture their families. Their children. Their loved ones. Life is… Simpler here. It's peaceful to have good and evil drawn so readily. When I see the banners they fly, I know their crimes, and I am swift to usher in whatever punishment they rightfully deserve."

She shook her hand, scattering both blood and beetles. The beetles decided to pursue easier avenues of predation, and quickly found fresh wounds on the hanging Dark Elves. Every time the Night-skinned elves would shake their bodies, tearing at their wounds and chains as they scared off the bugs. Every time this drew more blood, and the bugs returned a little earlier, a little braver. Every time their efforts sapped their strength, and soon the grinding mouthparts of the Jade beetle found purchase in their flesh.

Hinata ignored the rekindled screaming, walking away with a single Jade beetle perched on her shoulder. She threw a glance at one of the elves, his struggling form now a rippling mass of shiny green insects. "This is a peaceful world Shino. I wish you could have seen it."

Thinking of her old friends, as she walked back to her village, The Untouchable Maiden thought of her friends, wondering where they were and how they were doing. Between Dark Elf raids and her training, she had a lot of time to think about her lost companions. One in particular filled her nightly prayers.

"Neji. I hope you have found the same peace as I."

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His roar echoed through the treetops, shattering the eardrums of any being stupid enough to stand in his way. Mighty muscles rippled beneath thick scales, carrying a serrated war club through three enemies at a time. The ratmen were sick, their bodies weak with pestilence, rotting flesh that cut twice as easily as it should. Putrid fluids poured out, and he stepped around the poisonous puddles to carve through another block of foes.

Neji struck out with his left hand, and the long bone spear impaled a Skaven squad leader. It had been hiding behind legions of its minions, but the Lizardmen forces carved through the rancid rats like the blades of the Old Ones. His saurus warriors never ceased their charge, ignoring the countless ratmen that swarmed around them in an endless tide. They trampled over the pestilential plague-bearers with ease.

Another roar rippled free of his throat, scaring away every animal for a handful of miles. That included the ratmen currently trying to overwhelm his elite warriors. A surge of eager barks came from the warrior band, and they fought twice as hard. In an instant, the Skaven battle lines buckled and broke, tens of thousands of plague-infested ratmen fleeing before an army that barely fielded a tenth their number.

Neji grinned, it was just as the skinks had said. The Skaven fought with swarm tactics, but fled when the battle turned bad. The Plagued ones were ever worse, fighting ignorant of their injuries for as long as they could, ignoring their horrendous losses and injuries. But even they had a breaking point, and against the rippling wall of scales that stabbed and cut and gnashed their bright pointed teeth, the rats broke even faster.

Gong. Gong. Gong.

A mighty bell began to toll, rolling out of the forsaken temple-city, surrounded by countless squirming forms of brown and black fur. These rats were special. Their bodies were adorned with sigils of clan pestilens, drawn with the mighty pox-scribe. Marks that covered their bodies in a tapestry of tainted tattoos. Buboes gave way to rashes, rashes became a mass of weeping sores, and in some places even stranger reactions were taking place.

Neji saw one Skaven warrior leading the pack. Beneath its markings the skin looked like it was falling off the bone, and blood dripped from every opening. This was a tidal wave of hacking, coughing, vomiting foes, enemies who's every body fluid spelled instant death. His roar stopped his legions, and the countless skinks that had accompanied him to battle began to attack.

Spears fell like rain, blowguns thrummed like the flutes of the gods. The polluted Skaven fell in countless numbers, but the bell tumbled forward, tolling its ominous gong. A pale rat with curling horns on its head screeched and shouted as it pounded away on the mighty bell.

Neji raised a single clawed hand, pointing at the mage-rat. From the back of his lines, a dozen great war-beasts trundled forward, led by the mad shouts of a single saurus. Standing seven feet tall, Aka'hitohotl seemed downright puny atop his Greater Stegadon. The horned beast left footprints that a kroxigor could use as a bathtub, and its tail cleared every tree for a dozen paces. Only Aka'hitohotl stood atop it, for the mighty monster would permit no other rider.

With a mad cackle, the saurus drew a single massive spear, easily eight feet long and topped with a dozen bony barbs. He slid on foot forward, sinking his clawed toes into the dense skin of the Stegadon. If the beast even noticed, it gave no sign, stopping to chew on a handful of ferns. The muscular arms of its rider slid back slowly, and the mighty saurus exhaled slowly.

Then the spear vanished.

No eyes could match the speed with which Aka'hitohotl threw. Anything he hurled simply vanished before reappearing in his target. Some said his arms were blessed by the old ones, as they were longer than those of a normal saurus. Others said that the jungle itself had blessed him, allowing him to swing from the trees like the many small primates that dwelled within the forest.

Neji cared not, whatever the answer may be. He watched the Rat-mage tumble from the belltop with a smile of purest delight. The Skaven infested ones, watching their war-mage die, shouted a prayer to their rotting gods and charged the saurus line.

Behind them, a dozen different gongs took up the battle chant, and numerous belltowers appeared ahead of thousands of rallied warriors. From their ranks, hundreds of feral-eyed ratmen ran forward, swinging their great flails which oozed a blinding green gas.

These were the weapons of Clan Pestilens. The Flailing warriors that slew entire units of Lizardmen with a single breath. The fumes would destroy his entire army, had he not prepared for them.

He barked a command, and his saurus took up their short spears. Swords were the preferred weapons of the saurus, but against such toxic foes, any range was a welcome boon. The plague censor-bearers were about to reach his line, when Neji roared his final order.

It was a roar that snapped the wind itself, and cleared the battlefield of every noise. The roar of a Greater Saurus, the first of his kind. It shattered the morale of the approaching Skaven, and even in their frenzied state, it gave them a moments pause. As fierce as a carnosaur and as loud as a stegadon, it cut across the battlefield and gave the signal to his skinks hiding in the jungle.

Dozens of skinks took up the call, roaring into the air in a call of pure power. Each of the skinks wore clothes made of feather, bone, and hide. They carried walking sticks carved of the rarest trees, decorated with the finest adornments. Crystals and gold, blood and bone. Each was a Skink tribal priest, and each joined their voice to the cacophony.

Magic spilled forth into the world, raw and untamed, directed by the combined intellect of every priest in his entire army. Neji watched as clouds formed in the sky, and a torrential rain fell down upon his foes. The plague flailers with their putrid weapons, found themselves smashing into the saurus lines moments after the rain washed away their toxins.

Their weapons reduced simply to a large metal ball on a chain, all of them were slain with ease, cut down by the cold precision of the Lizardmen. The infected Skaven followed a second later, their most heavily adorned warriors leading the way.

No armor covered their bodies, and each sword was caked in a fine red grime. These warriors went into battle eager to spread their tainted body fluids to their foes. The rain washed away their foul blood, cleansing their weapons in the torrential downpour and leaving them little more than rusty swords.

A thousand Skaven died before they realized that they were only running headfirst into the weaponized meat-grinder of the Lizardmen who fell back a few paces, only when the pile of rat-thing corpses in front of them grew higher than three feet. As the Skaven gained ground over the numberless bodies of their companions, the skink priests who were not preoccupied with the rains cast searing beams of sunlight upon their foes. Two of the cursed bells had already toppled in the fighting, and the Skaven units were kept fighting solely by the endless press of bodies.

Then they broke, and ran once more.

Cloudy skies cleared, and a serious of sharp barks went up around the Lizardmen ranks. A victory. Neji looked over a field of Rat-man corpses, and the flies that had only just begun to feast. How disappointing. Here he had thought these vermin would pose more of a threa-

A roar went up from the back lines, as dozens of infected Skaven poured out of hidden holes beneath the ground. His skinks formed up into bands of warriors and drew their short weapons, but they were only fighting against the inevitable. The infested Skaven began to spit, and where their foul fluids landed the pox was spread.

From the temple-city, a gong sounded off that shook the bones in Neji's ears. A cart wheeled out, pulled by a thousand Rat-men, heaving a great iron cauldron onto the battlefield. Fumes seeped out of it, and Neji recognized the legendary Cauldron of a Thousand Poxes. A mystical artifact that had brought more death and destruction to his people than any other foe in a thousand years.

From beneath it, millions of squirming vermin swarmed across the field, blanketing it in their squirming forms. Then a green haze of fog covered the field, and from within it, the plague monks of Clan Pestilens marched forward. There was no mad rush here. The infested Skaven were simple minded cannon fodder, used to poison foes. No, these monks were organized, forming large block units each with 100 of the green-grey robed rats.

Their teeth were yellow, their gums bloody and red. With sunken, hollow faces they glared hatefully through jaundiced eyes. These beasts were hungry for blood, and only their faith kept them in line until the order was given.

A grey seer hobbled through their lines, leaning heavily on a walking stick. Its face was a mass of white pustules, and the book in its hands was slowly dripping brown fluids. Pale eyes scanned the Lizardman lines, stopping the second they saw Neji. For a second, both leaders met each others gaze, and both snarled at the other.

The rat raised its wooden stick, shaking the metal spiked ball on the end and screeching in hate. Neji raised his club, sticky with the blood of countless Skaven, and roared as both armies advanced. Instantly he learned the folly of his ways.

Fighting his way through the one-sided slaughter of the Clan Pestilens foot soldiers had stirred the blood of his men. They were excited to fight, eager to win… And used to foes with no combat skill. Clan Pestilens hit his hardened battle lines like a wave, each unit accompanied by a Plague Priest, spewing filthy words that turned into spells of darkness and corruption. The ratty monks of Clan Pestilens approached at a frantic pace, and soon his forces were fully engaged.

Plague Priests lobbed spells into his lines, each attack slaying dozens and breaking the unit formation. The monks took advantage of this, surging into the breach and slaying more and more of his vulnerable troops. This was bad! If they couldn't make some progress against the priests, this would lead to a complete rout!

Neji fought his way forward, surrounded by his elite guard. They carved through a unit, fighting towards the nearest cackling rat-mage. His men forced their way into the middle of the Plague monks, when a call went up among the rats and a single warrior stepped up to fight.

"Filth-claw, Filth-claw, Filth-claw!" Neji watched as one of the enemy warlords walked forward, his left paw a writhing mass of pustules and rotten skin. As he watched, the limb went through a series of small spasms, before a finger-long stream of pus slid out. In the warriors right hand, he held a long scimitar, currently soaked in a sticky brown slime that drew every fly nearby. Filthclaw was a tall, black stormvermin rat, with a left arm covered in pox-scribe writing. Rusted armor covered his body, and an iron helm covered his face.

Neji never even slowed, simply punching the spear in his left arm through the visor of the helmet. The rat dropped to the floor like it had just had it's head impaled, and Neji kicked the corpse as he walked past. His warriors, bolstered by the slaughter of the enemy captain, charged into the Skaven like men possessed, slaughtering them with ease.

Tearing through a dozen fleeing vermin with his club, Neji almost missed the knife that was tossed at him. He ducked at the last moment, and instead it caught one of his warriors in the side. The lizard turned a putrid shade of pale, before collapsing as foam spilled forth from its mouth.

He looked at the thrower, to see a slender rat wearing long black robes, it's chest wrapped in leather strips that held dozens of throwing knives. "Come-come, Kill you I will." It hissed through rotten teeth, "Qhrich The Virulent, your death Mine-Mine!" Three knives soared towards Neji, and he barely blocked the all-too accurate projectiles with his war club, knocking them aside. He rushed forward to attack the spry knife-thrower when a massive sword knocked him out of the way.

Now, Neji was not a small creature, not by any sense of the word. He stood just under 9 feet tall, a mass of muscle covered in scale so thick it was practically a second suit of armor. His fists could pull boulders from the ground, and reduce them to pebbles just as easily.

But the rat that stood in front of him made that look downright puny.

A massive beast stood above him, almost as tall as one of the Stegadons in his army. Its shoulders alone were a head taller than he was. Muscles bulged out of its body so obscenely they had to be some sort of horrific mutation. Arms as thick as tree trunks twirled a ten-foot broadsword with ease. Legs as hard as rocks shook the ground when they stomped. Beady black eyes stared into his own, and an odd intelligence slowly picked him apart.

"I like." It grumbled, with a voice like a rock tumbler. "My Kill." Then it charged into battle, while the smaller rat squeaked obscenities at it's back.

Neji dodged to the side, rolling quickly. He hissed when the poisoned daggers clanged off his war club. He couldn't keep this up forever and the battle had just started! Ignoring the larger Rat, he rushed the assassin, going for a quick kill to make the battle end sooner.

Across the field, his warriors were dying in droves. In the jungles, the skinks were disorganized and lost, struggling to rally in the face of the endless toxic Skaven that sought to drown them in numbers. The war beasts were trapped inbetween, unable to reach combat without trampling their allies, and without the Skink priests the poisonous spells of Clan Pestilens would kill those great beasts as easily as any other creature.

In the middle of the field, Lord Skrolk was casting a plague. The evil green miasma engulfed entire units, stirring the Skaven into a frenzy even as it sapped the strength from the mighty Lizardmen.

The Cauldron of Poxes began to cast it's own spells, as Festich the Brewmaster stirred the massive pond of death. The spells rolling off of it warped the very winds of magic, weakening all other spells nearby. Where they fell, everything died.

Though the Lizardmen were still holding strong, Neji could feel that unless he broke through to attack the mages that were decimating his army in droves, he would die here. His lunging attack was easily dodged by his opponent, who simply pranced back with the agility of a dancer,throwing knives all the while. Neji had to shield himself to advance, and was caught off guard when the giant rat swatted him aside with one fist.

His bones broke beneath the fist, and he was sent crashing into the plague monk lines. The treacherous vermin fell upon him, stabbing and hacking away at his tough scaly body. Neji could only close his eyes as he felt the two rats approaching. "I'm sorry my friends. Perhaps you will succeed where I have failed. Goodbye."

The last thing he saw was a fly landing on his face, only to stare at him. Clearly the little insect was waiting for him to die. Well, at least it would not be waiting long.

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He buried the little rodents skull in the dirt next her body. They were both victims, murdered by this cruel land, and the best he could do for them was a few handfuls of dry dirt in a shallow pit. The dirt was hard, and dry. It scraped his hands when he tried to dig up enough to give the sad-looking girls skull a proper resting place.

Naruto was staring off into the wastes, wondering not for the first time if he would be better off just walking straight into the dust. It couldn't be that bad right? Not as bad as life in the village at any rate. An endless storm of dust… Talons of fear clutched at his heart. What if this was the entire world?

What if his friends were trapped in places even worse than this? What if they were looking for him?

He could have sat there asking questions forever. This close to the bluffs, the biting wind was no worse than the stabbing sunlight. If he could handle one, he could handle the other.

Once again contemplating an adventure into the true wastelands, Naruto almost missed the dull gleam of armor in the swirling dust. Then a figure walked out.

A gasp died in his throat when he saw the figure. Seven feet of bright gold armor, outlined with hot pink accents. His first thought was, "What happened to Sakura?!" Then his mind caught up with the stories, and he noticed the walking suit of armor carried a sword.

Four overlapping circles connected by a stick. The emblem of Slaanesh.

The Chaos Warrior strode forward, beady red eyes pinning Naruto to the ground as the marauder approached with its sword in hand. He couldn't move. Something in those eyes kept him trapped there, locked in place as the subtle hint of pleasures yet unknown danced through his mind.

Naruto would have died then and there. But as the warrior approached him, the agent of Slaanesh stepped on a patch of rough dirt, and the sharp snap of bone came from beneath its heavy foot. The warrior looked down at the shattered remnants of skull now scattered in the dirt.

The second those blood red eyes left his, Naruto was gone, vanishing into the cliffs. He knew these mountains like the back of his hand. No warrior was going to find him in the rocks, blessed of chaos or not. He heard a loud shifting of stone as the warrior forced its way through the narrow area.

"Boy. Boy come here. You have seen my armor, you know who I serve. What is it you want? I can give you women. Pleasures beyond your mortal imagination are yours for the taking. My companions are coming, we need warriors for an attack on the traitor Nurgle. Lead me to your village and you may have anything you want." Its voice was not androgynous, though it had no gender. Rather, it was a voice that ran the entire slew of attractive voices, one second gruff and masculine, the next slutty and playful. As if a thousand beautiful people were speaking at once.

Naruto felt icy fingers caress his spine. He almost gave in to the supernatural siren call, but his mind remembered that poor unnamed girl, and her shattered skull. Suddenly all he felt was bloodlust, a staunch desire to kill this strangely beautiful warrior-monster.

He dropped his sword, and shouted towards the infernal soldier of chaos. "Fine. My village is this way anyways." Then he scurried into the rocks he knew so well, climbing high up the sheer cliffs. His strong fingers carried him at practically running speed up the hills.

"I will scout ahead and let them know. Just follow this trail until you see the cave. It looks a bit poor… Nothing suitable for a warrior of your caliber. But my people are strong and we will serve you well." He shouted down at the warrior, then went on ahead.

Meanwhile the Chaos warrior walked along the trail, and straight into the chaos goblin caves. Now normally this might have been fine. Chaos Goblins were not known for keeping good guard, and it took a lot to marshal their caves. But Naruto had gotten their first, badly injuring both guards.

He was Chaos Goblin public enemy number 1. They hated him with a passion. When he failed to kill the guards, they rallied the entire caved. The soldier of Slaanesh was expecting 20-30 barbarians to serve as cannon fodder for the upcoming campaign. When it wandered into the cave, it was expecting to find a small army of filthy humans, eager to serve a Chaos agent of purest pleasure.

Instead, it found a band of goblins armed with makeshift weapons, eager to take their pound of flesh from the boy who had killed so many of them. The Slaanesh warrior entered without a care in the world. Chaos warriors did not feel fear, after all. Instead, it only felt mild irritation when the goblins struck it from behind, sinking a short dagger into the small gap at the neck of its armor.

Without a sign of pain, the warrior swung its sword arm like a whip, cleaving off the goblins arms. "You have made a grave mistake boy." It promised ominously, sweeping inhumanly flexible arms and carving through two of the goblins. Now the entire cave was rushing it, assuming that the dagger had done some significant damage.

Pink armor was soon drenched in rotting red slime, as the sword became a whirlwind dervish that mulched any goblin stupid enough to get close. The perfect edge of the sword sliced through flesh and bone without pause, and the merciless warrior slew goblins with every swipe. Soon there was nothing left in the cave but goblin chunks, and an enraged warrior with an already healing wound in its neck.

The pink armored soldier of pleasure left the caves with a promise on its lips. "Boy! When I find you, I will play a song of countless torturous pleasures upon your body. You will be nothing more than a broken toy when I finish with you! This I swear upon Sla-"

"SHUT UP!" Naruto shouted, as he shoved the largest boulder he could move off the cliff. The Slaanesh warrior had enough time to look up, before a very heavy boulder smashed into its helmet.

When Naruto looked over the cliff lip, he could see the Magical sword on the ground, and the pink armored warrior in a tangled bloody mess on the ground. He climbed down, gathering the goblin heads, and using the warriors own enchanted sword to hack off the heavy helmet.

"You know… I wonder what your head is worth? Hopefully those friends of yours don't show up until I can throw together a proper welcoming." Hey, on the plus side, he had a new sword now. And soon, a new shield.

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End of the chapter

So, hope you guys enjoyed this. The war scene and Naruto's fight with the Slaanesh, were both something I wanted to do for a while, but they might be rewritten at some point if you dislike them. There were some issues I had with the last scene, but you know how writing can be.

Tell me what you think!


	6. Who Is Our Mystery Man

Chapter Six

I can't tell you how many people left reviews about Neji's scene. Evidently a lot of people don't want him to die. Well I'll let you in on a little secret… READ ON AND YOU SHALL KNOW THE TRUTH!

Am I a Game of Thrones level bastard who reads about how much you love a character and then decides to kill him?

Am I an impassive SOB who reads your requests and follows the plan I had anyways because I'm the writer and I do what I want?

Am I some simpering looser who keeps a character alive just because you like him?

(It's the second one. Definitely the second one.)

I own neither Naruto, nor Warhammer Fantasy. This work is entirely non-profit, committed solely for good wholesome fun. Which means that all those sue-happy GW lawyers can suck it.

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A howl pierced the knight like a knife, sending splinters of fear down a dozen spines. Shadowy figures that had been rushing through the forest paused, as if unwilling to accept the sound for what it was. A pair of cloven hooves clapped together, and a goat-faced humanoid bleated a soft prayer to its evil gods.

The tribe of Beastmen ran for the forests edge like the combined forces of the warp were after them. If the rumors were to be believed, perhaps they were.

At the head of the tribe, a mighty Minotaur led the pack, urging them onwards with a guttural bray. Spittle flew from its misshapen teeth, and the gigantic axe it carried was swung in a frenzied onwards motion. As the leader locked back, two more of its pack vanished in the undergrowth, never to return.

"FER-WERD! FER-WERD!" It shouted in a desperate bid to keep the pack together. A tangle of trees blocked the path ahead, and the minotaur shouldered through them without a second thought. The trees collapsed, and the pack continued onwards, now few enough to be counted on an elven bow quiver.

As the Minotaur led the charge onwards, the howl came again, this time from high overhead. The pack master spun around, stopping as it looked up and raised that mighty tree-hewing axe in defence. Seven feet of rippling muscle stood ready to fight, its body as wide as a tree trunk and just as sturdy. A Minotaur in combat was a fierce foe, and something no opponent ever took lightly. Two horns curled off its head in spirals, and a string of bones hung off of each, which shook and jangled on the wind like demonic wind-chimes.

High overhead, yellow eyes twitched in delight.

The Minotaur brayed its challenge, and swung the axe overhead. A simple display of physical prowess. It looked into those yellow eyes that all the Beastmen had come to fear, and it bellowed the mightiest challenge it could. A monstrous bellow that shook every muscle along its throat, and echoed through the forest for many miles.

Six arrows found its throat before the below had even finished, silencing, paralyzing, and killing the chaos-spawned monstrosity in the same instant. It hit the ground with a thump, staring across the forest with eyes that quickly grew cloudy as its terrified pack scattered on the four winds. A soft rustling in the trees was the only indication that the hunting elves were moving. Together, they were a threat. Alone, they were scared, cowardly, weak, and above all else… Easy targets.

One Elf went after each, coming back moments later with trophies in hand. One Elf waited in the canopy, watching. Waiting. His plan had flown as straight and true as an arrow, and when the leading Minotaur let out that mighty roar it surely drew dozens more of the filthy Beastmen.

"As a pack of Wolves bring down a Deer, we will wound them, separate them, and destroy them." The Elf, Dhozka the Wolf, waited in the canopy. His bow had yet to be fired, and the night was young. Much hunting would be done tonight.

For Kiba, death had taught many virtues. Life among the Elves, and the wisdom that eternity brought, had been the greatest of balms on his endless spiritual wounds. For the first time in either off his lives, he could laugh at his fight with Naruto in the Chunin exams. Losing to a fart, it even brought a smile to his face, where before it had only drawn rage.

Clasping his hands in Prayer, Dhozka offered thanks for the bounty of the forest, and the forest offered thanks back to him for cleansing it. He could feel the trees gratitude as it enthused his very being. Five packs would be offered in sacrifice this night, and when Dhozka arrived at his home, his parishioners were already waiting for him.

His home lay on the outset of Stralio, a minor Wood Elf village of nearly a hundred Elves. They hunted for food, and purged the Beastkin of the region with the utmost aggression. Rumors of the Wolf, a fearsome yellow-eyed spirit that struck down Beastmen with a murderous howl had already chased many of the Beast-tribes from the region. Now Stralio only found hunts in other areas of the forest, and they used the same tactics every night to draw in as many victims as they could.

Dhozka's humble home was located inside of a massive pine tree that had suffered a bark-beetle attack countless seasons ago. The inside was hollow, creating a pleasant alcove for him to rest, and draw respite. The wide space around the tree allowed him a proper audience hall for his followers. Red-green leaves filled each branch, and his followers sat on these branches as they eagerly awaited his words.

He had a small congregation tonight, only a few billion. But it was understandable, even the smallest beings had their own things that needed doing, and that too was understandable. First things first, Dhozka took the horns of the first Minotaur he killed, and powdered them in a large marble basin, grinding each with rapid strikes of a thick bone mortar. He mixed in a strip of Shaman heart-muscle, and a pinch of Two-Beast connectives.

The concoction came into his mind as he was creating it, and he felt the magic of the forest invigorating the ingredients as he grabbed them from their individual sacks. When it was finished, a fine paste had been formed, red in most parts but swirled with white. Neither of the two colors blended, each remaining distinct, but the colors moved and changed on their own as they squirmed like living things.

He poured a flask of spring water on them, and the potion turned a dark ocean blue. Dhozka dunked his face within the mixture, drinking deep of the now untainted materials. It left a tingle in his throat, as the potions always did, and when he walked outside he could see his followers.

Three elves sat in the high branches, watching him without a sound. These sermons may have started for other audiences, but they were free to all who cared to listen. Each of the Elves had marked their cheeks with Beast-kin blood, and each mark looked like a large fang. But Dhozka did not offer preferential treatment to his own kind. He smiled at the crowd as he waved a single hand.

A deep buzz greeted him, coming from billions of sources.

On every leaf of every tree, covering dozens of trees around his home, thousands of insects had gathered. They took up every inch of space, but maintained a perfect sense of decorum. Predators and prey had gathered in unison, toxic and benign as well. None fought around the home of Dhozka, first Shaman of the Stralio Wood Elves. It was an unspoken rule that all beings instinctively understood.

With the potion buzzing through his veins, Dhozka spoke, and his words were heard by all. Every Elf, every insect, and every plant heard each and every syllable as is it were personally tailored to them. When he spoke, he tossed trophies to the surrounding clearing, each trophy soaked in the nights potion. Organs ripped from his hunt victims, they were swiftly devoured by whatever beings they landed upon. Bugs devoured many, but also the grass itself began to feast on the fallen flesh.

Tonight the speech of Silence rang out through Dhozka's domain. A sermon of few words but deep meaning, offered as thanks to the God of Renewal, and Thoughtful Contemplation. The God of Insects and All That Go Beneath The Notice Of Others.

The God named Shino. Dhozka had started talking to the bugs around his house because he felt lonely, and missed his many friends. He felt trapped in this strangers land of mysterious creatures, and was in need of a lifeline. Talking to bugs had kept him sane until his powers awakened… Then they had begun to talk back. The potions he created could grant the gift of speech to any living thing, the very winds of magic conveying every word with picture perfect clarity. After drinking the potion, the bugs he spoke to carried his words far and wide.

Every insect in Athel Loren came at least once a month to hear his Sermon. They carried his words to the furthest corner of the earth, and at the rate that insects bred, soon his clearing became too small for the number of insects desperate to hear his words and converse with him. They asked about Shino, and he told them. He told them words of Wisdom. He whispered glimmers of intellect into their minds, and the insects carried his sayings across the planet.

Dhozka had thrown away the name of Kiba, because Kiba was a brash child who spoke without knowing. Now, his every word was carefully weighed, as a human merchant weighs his gold.

Today was truly a blessed day though. One of the bugs in the front row that had feasted upon a Gor's liver, spoke up and delivered a piece of wonderful news.

It had found one of Dhozka's lost companions.

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Neji watched the lumbering Rat Ogre approach him. It moved slowly, trapping him beneath a predatory stare. It wiped a paw across its frothing lips, smearing away a mass of grey-green foam that oozed out of a rancid mouth. The sword it carried dragged across the ground, carving a trench wherever the great beast walked.

A band of Saurus Warriors jumped in front of it, forming a phalanx of shields and spears. These elite warriors created a mass of tough scales, supporting rock-hard armor, while protecting their interlocking shields with dozens of razor-sharp spears that stuck out from every opening. Such was the determination in their cold reptilian eyes, that they would die before they let a single vermin approach their commander.

Some were already dying, tainted by the countless poisons of Clan Pestilens. Their scales were slick with sweat, and an off-white color was polluting their flesh as it spread throughout. Still they stood, though one had to pause so it could cough out a chunk of rotting lung, and another was already blind, its eyes now a rheumy yellow.

Together they stood, unified as brothers, comrades, and warriors. Until the rat ogre shattered their defensive line with a swipe of its blade, and the smaller assassin sent a flurry of deadly daggers into the rest. In moments, the finest the Lizardman army could offer were dead and dying masses of flesh, doomed only to clutter the ground.

The rat ogre loomed high overhead, and Neji was bathed within its shadow. He could see the glinting sword, poised to end his life, and his eyes tracked the massive sword's fall as it approached his body.

CRUNCH

The rat ogre skipped across the battlefield, doing an impressive imitation of a throwing star before it smacked into a tree with enough force to topple the hundred year old oak. Enough blood-red bone stuck out of its body that Neji felt certain it would not be standing again.

In front of him, Neji saw a humanoid shape, its fist still extended from striking the ogre. A face that was hidden beneath an ink-black cowl looked at the fist in some form of surprise, as if unaware of its own strength.

"Man-thing?! Die quick-quick!" The assassin rat shrieked, tossing handful after handful of poisoned throwing stars. Each flew towards the cloaked stranger, and each had been slathered in enough unearthly poisons to kill and entire village.

The shadowy form caught them all, each and every blade, in a single hand. The same hand it had just been staring at. A hand that moved so quickly, Neji couldn't see where the catching stopped and the throwing began. One moment the Skaven assassin was filling the air with so many throwing weapons that he thought for a moment Tenten was back, the next its body hit the ground, dozens of metal objects sticking out of every visible surface.

Hood covering its face, the figure turned back towards Neji. "You need help." Its voice rippled with the winds of magic, washing over his injured body. It was a voice like crashing waves on a rocky shore, a voice that rippled and squirmed like a living creature. Neji managed a brief nod, still unsure of this strange visitor, but altogether grateful for its help. "I shall assist." Then it raced into the melee, and Neji was only aware of its presence whenever another of the Clan Pestilens mages fell silent.

Lord Skrolk saw the cloaked human rushing towards him. He saw as it flowed through the Skaven battle lines as if they were not even there, dodging every possible blow. He readied his fiercest magic, the most powerful plague in Clan Pestilens history, and as the human bore down on him he breathed out.

An immense cloud of yellow gas flooded the field, emanating from Lord Skrolk. Everything that so much as breathed of that foul cloud died in an instant. The Skaven lines broke and shattered as their own lord slaughtered them by the thousands. The plague infested rat swarms collapsed in the millions, and entire squads of Lizardmen who had come too close to the lines of combat fell among their foes. Even the mighty Warlocks of Clan Pestilens fell to the ground. Truly it was a spell of instant death for any and all, leaving only Lord Skrolk alive when the yellow cloud dispersed after several long minutes.

Lord Skrolk stood in the middle of a field. A field of death. The very earth had been stained with the deaths of millions, and though the vast majority were his own Verminous legions… Commanders could be replaced. More infantry were born every day. Clan Pestilens would rise anew, like a swarm of rats crawling out of the waste-bin. News of their victory would spread like a plague, and the others in the Council of Thirteen would again learn the might of Clan Pestilens.

"Scale-Things!" His ancient voice carried across the field, broken only by the frequent coughing fit. The primary plague had damaged his body as well. "See you are might! Mighty Clan Pestilens, all powerful! Run-run, while you can, kill-kill tomorrow. Big-big mistake attacking us. Sicken, and die."

Then the master mage of all Clan Pestilens turned to leave the battlefield. But something was standing in his way. "YOU! Man-thing?!" He cried in disbelief, the scent of fear squirting out of his scent glands.

The robed human was indeed standing behind him. Appearing out of thin air, to grab the mage by its pus-dripping maw, and lifting the struggling Skaven elder into the air with ease. Ancient limbs shook, and green-yellow robes were stained with brown. But the struggles accomplished nothing. Then the elder fell still, and the human form dropped the corpse without another word. It walked through the scattered remnants of the Skaven lines, and approached Neji, who was only just recovering from his many wounds.

"You acted too soon. Know that your friends are taking the time to gather their forces, but your foolishness has exhausted what little might I have gathered. Enjoy your victory. Acknowledge the price you have paid. Protect your holdings, for the Rat-Things will not take this lying down…" Its voice rolled across the field, before the form vanished onto the winds, melting away into pillars of black smoke, leaving behind hundreds of-

Neji knelt on the ground, looking at the countless dead fly corpses. His eyes went wide, and despite the pain in his chest he stood up and laughed a jubilant barking laugh. "Onwards! We go to break what few remain!"

His Saurus cheered their mighty roars, and rushed into the temple-city, slaughtering thousands of sickly Skaven. Not one of the foul Ratmen were spared the sword, and only those who fled quickly enough found their way to the great tunnel that traveled beneath the ocean. Soon, pillars of smoke rose high in the sky as Diseased rats burned by the millions.

Hours later, Neji had raised a flag from the top of the highest temple, proclaiming this land the property of the Lizardmen empire once again. His heart, heavy from the loss of so many, was warmed by the presence of a new friend. One once thought lost forever.

As the wind blew high above the temple cities, Neji whispered into the flowing air, "Glad you could join us, Shino." When a fly landed on his clawed hand, he knew that his words had been heard.

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Naruto stared into the abyss, and could feel the eyes upon him. Slaanesh was coming, and like the sandstorms that filled this land, he was unsure if they could be stopped. His actions had drawn first blood, and those same actions might doom him and all his people to a gruesome demise. At best. Of all the Chaos Gods, the Slaanesh were the most creative in their torturing.

Pride is a dangerous shield, a proud warrior will stay silent, no matter how many fingers you slice off, or how brutally his flesh is carved. But when you start perusing object suitable for anal penetration, the more prideful warriors break in moments.

He knew what fate lay in wait for him should he falter now. If his village had willingly joined Slaanesh, they would have been front-line fodder. Nameless nobodies sent to fight and die in droves whenever the Slaan leaders wanted to know how many archers were positioned in a location, or how well defended the walls were along a certain stretch of enemy encampment. They would have fought humans simply for the sake of fighting, and they would have died simply for the sake of dying. His entire village would die out, after doing nothing but bringing a small sliver of misery into the world.

Fuck that.

Naruto glared into the swirling sands that filled the desert around his home. He hated the people of his homeland, and he hated the people of this region. Nothing sounded better right now than an all-out war between the Chaos factions. All out war which hadn't been seen since he was born… War where tens of thousands of chaos followers died horrible bloody deaths.

Now, the enemy was simply a scouting party. A band of Chaos Warriors, sent to rally barbarian tribes to their banner. The mischievous wheels in his head were turning faster and faster. A plan was coming to mind, a complicated plan. A beautiful plan. A plan that would flood the deserts in chaos-tainted blood and cripple the ruinous powers for generations to come!

First though, he had to trick his village into going along with it. Something that, in all honesty, shouldn't be that hard. Naruto scooped up the Slaanesh head as he ran to the village center.

Sure enough, the village center was just as dusty as he remembered it. The heat of the sun fell down like a wave of fire, and nobody wanted to stay in a flat open area like the village center for long.

Azalk was the exception. He sat in the hot sun, carving stones of various sizes into several decorative emblems. It was why his existence was tolerated past the point where he could fight, his decorative stones were used as grave markings for families of note, and he carved offerings to the Blood God when their usual sacrifices were a bit lacking.

Naruto dropped the Slaanesh head at his feet, the purple-pink helmet an immediate identifier for anyone who had seen Slaanesh soldiers before. Azalk raised his head, a grim look on his face. "You didn't find this, did you?"

Azalk knew the answer before he asked, and Naruto knew that Azalk was just asking for the sake of asking. Because he hoped he was wrong, or because he wanted to hear it from Naruto's mouth. Either way, Naruto said nothing, only matching his stare.

"Well. You've fucked up now boy. Creatures like this don't travel alone." He turned the helmeted skull in his hands. "I'll give you a good price for the armor though. How about a bow?"

Naruto had to bite his lip. He had wanted a real ranged weapon for some time now. As far as he knew, up to this point, none of his fellow villagers even knew how to use a ranged weapon. To say nothing of actually BUILDING one. He needed one to make the most of his skills, and with even a short bow he could carve the Chaos Goblin tribes apart. When he was hiding in the cliffs… An army couldn't drag him out. With a bow he would be as powerful as any mage.

"No deal. Promise to teach me, and its all yours." His counter offer. The same one he had been offering since he first learned of Azalks crafting capabilities. It was the one thing he wanted more than a bow.

"Always the same thing with you, isn't it. Very well, but only on my conditions. If you meet my requirements, I will teach you. If you do not… I will keep the armor, and any other price I decide to extract from you. Knowledge is never given freely, that path leads to the arms of Tzeentch."

Naruto froze. This was it. An offer to teach him. But what a cost it was. He didn't even know what the challenge was! It could be some impossible task, something planned just to ensure that he was punished for his greedy pursuit of knowledge. It was just the kind of thing Azalk would do, and at a time like this, reading the old man was impossible. His face was as expressive as stone.

"Fine. What are your requirements. I'll do anything you want, if it means learning your secrets." He grit his teeth in determination, knowing that whatever Azalk said he would manage it. Somehow.

The old man clapped the dust off his hands. "Alright. First of all, send the warriors to gather the armor. I need that to start things off. Be warned, this will be the most difficult challenge of your life. If you survive, and remain who you are, then you will arise as a figure of power who's very will shapes the world. If you do not, you will be just another casualty in the pursuit of knowledge."

"I said I'd do it. Tell me what you want from me." Naruto was growing tired of riddles, though he was happy for the opportunity. Cryptic comments were not something he enjoyed.

Azalk laughed. A dry cough of a laugh, but unmistakably a laugh. "You are going to win this war for us. You will destroy these agents of Slaanesh, taking challenges one at a time to improve your skills. When the dust has settled, you will either become my apprentice, or be just another of the sun-bleached skulls that litter the desert."

Punching his fist into his hand, Naruto met Azalks imposing declaration with one of his own. "Pff, I was going to do that anyway. Whats first?"

Wizened fingers spread in an amused fashion, "Every warlord needs an army. Gather yours."

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End of chapter

So this was a lot of fun to write, even if it took a while. The battle with Neji, and the twist at the end, was something I had been preparing for. No, Shino is not back from the dead. Think about it carefully, and you'll probably figure out where he came from.

So Naruto is going to try and fight the most powerful warriors on the planet with nothing more than a handful of barbarians. How should he do this?

If you have a suggestion, leave it below. I always appreciate interesting ideas!


	7. Where in the World Are They?

Chapter 7

So, I realized last chapter there was some confusion as to where Naruto and his tiny community are. They are NORTH of the mountains of mourn, in the realm of chaos (If only on the fringe of it). East of Norsca. The only real difference in the two regions is the temperature (The Chaos Wastes are hot and desert-ey, Norsca is a tundra.)

On a separate note, this chapter will be the last to focus heavily on side characters. While the stories of Naruto's waylaid companions is fun to tell, I have not spent nearly enough time with Naruto himself, something that is dragging my story down.

Lastly comes a question. Where should Naruto go first? I spent a lot of time discussing this with one of my reviewers -RoyalTwinFangs- thanks to this reviewer, I was able to figure out the next few chapters and where they will be going. If anyone else would like to help me storyboard, just shoot me a PM, and make sure you know something of Warhammer Fantasy. Without RTF, I would have entirely forgotten that Chaos Dwarfs are a thing.

I do not own Warhammer Fantasy. I do not own Naruto. At this point, I'm kind of glad for that. Five years ago I could never have imagined saying that. *DEEP SIGH*

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Unlike the others, I vividly remember my time as a soul. I flew above the sky forever, floating on the very air itself. Nothing matter. I saw the world, and it saw me.

The great forests that spread across the land talked with me, and I was glad for the company. When they spoke, they sounded like my grandfather. Soon, it was all I could do to stay my laughter when one started talking about the ancient times and I envisioned a wizened old man in his chair, stroking a long gray beard as he talked about a childhood long gone.

Then they talked about the current world, and I wished they'd go back to the lovely days of yore. Demons stalking the night for souls to corrupt, misshapen animals and humans swarming beneath the boughs like locusts. When the forests were happy, I could feel their happiness.

When they talked about the current times, I wanted to cry.

Pain and misery lay in wait around every corner. Suffering, endless suffering, and nobody was able to solve it. I tried my best, telling them all that my friends would fix it all. That they were strong and noble, that if anyone could do it, they would.

"What of you? What can you do?" Those words cut me like a knife.

It was the eldest of the forests, one that rarely spoke at all. It sounded tired, and when the others grew happy at my words, it alone spoke up.

My time in the sky was from that point on, silent. I ignored everything, and cut out even the comforting presence of the forests far beneath me. Then everything changed, as if a switch had been flicked.

I had been floating, long after my friends had drifted away. Now I shot through the sky like a meteor, moving faster and faster. The land beneath became a blur, and I could no longer tell left from right, up from down, or even North from South. I lost all sense of direction, even time became just a vague concept.

It felt like I had been shot from a cannon, only to impact a concrete wall head-first. I awoke in the dark with a sudden jolt, my eyes flickering open. The world around me was black. Ink-black. The darkest night I had ever seen.

My body felt heavy. Everything felt tight, like my skin was drying leather. I flexed my fingers, and felt only some heavy object beneath me. At the time, my mind was a whirl of confusion, and all I could think of was standing up and finding a light switch.

I managed to sit up, pulling hard against whatever was on my skin, Whatever it was, I knew that it was making it much harder to move. I grabbed my own arm, trying to remove the strange material, pulling a long string of it off with ease.

When I felt the bare bone of my arm, I knew that something was horribly wrong. I screamed, mentally at least. My mouth couldn't scream. I didn't even have a tongue!

Then something washed over me. Something that felt… Black. It doesn't make any sense, I know, but when it covered my body the energy had a distinct color-feel to it. Suddenly I could see!

Around me, everything had appeared etched in blue light. Fiery blue light. I could see the hard object beneath me, with four short walls on every side. I could see the bare bone of my left arm, and the strip of skin I held in my right hand.

The room around me was a small sphere, the surface of the walls was rough and pocked with tiny stones. Two lit torches blazed in the wall, but with my new vision I only saw vague blue outlines of the fire.

Lastly, I noticed the human in front of me. He was tiny, with a face so ugly even a beating could only have made him prettier. But in his hands he held a wrinkled stick, a stick that violently pulsed with the blue energy. Curious, I reached out and took it, wrenching it from the funny little humans hands. His mouth started moving, but I lacked the proper organs to hear. Instead, I touched the vibrant stick, trying to feel the energy inside of it.

But I felt nothing. It felt hard, just like the coffin beneath me. I remember thinking, "Maybe the glow comes from inside of it?" So with a curious twitch of my hands, I shattered the stick. The brilliant blue glow only grew in power, filling the air in front of my face with a rapidly vanishing cloud of pure energy.

Led by curiosity more than common sense, I poked the ball of power, pushing my hand inside of it. But my hand had the same problem the stick had. The energy did not want to move as I told it to, and it all drifted away.

Disappointed, I noticed the old man again. Now that my curiosity was sated, my analytical mind went into overdrive. I had woken up in a strange body, clearly one that had already been dead for a great deal of time. His presence couldn't be a coincidence, and the logical conclusion did not put me in a good mood.

He was still talking, waving his hands in a frantic flurry. I could see a strange black cloud forming around him, taking the shape of something that looked incredibly unpleasant. So I grabbed him by the neck, lifting him as if he weighed nothing at all. Immediately the cloud fell apart, vanishing just as the blue cloud had.

But when I touched his skin, I felt something tingling inside of my body. A vaguely greenish glow. It reminded me of my medical chakra, and following the same guidelines, I pushed the energy into my fingertips, and into his body.

What I saw disgusted me. There was such rot! Such filth! That a human being could even be alive after such torture had been done to ones organs… Picture Lady Tsunade's liver before she repaired it, and you've got a good idea what his organs looked like. Everything had atrophied, and I do mean EVERYTHING.

I poked the organs with my energy, telling it to fix them. The energy flowed into his body like medicinal chakra, but that was where the similarities ended.

It touched his organs, enveloped them, and then turned them into a smoothie. I had just mulched his organs, and so I pulled the energy back into my body, hoping that he could be saved- Naive, in retrospect, but I was still full of youthful idealism.

But when the energy returned to my body, it brought his bodily fluids along with it. Suddenly I lost my blue glowing vision, and the world returned to normal. I was in an underground crypt, surrounded by ancient artifacts, and of course the man I had just killed. He looked even uglier when seen by torchlight. Warty skin, and an oddly chunky red goo slid out of his mouth. I wondered what could have caused that, and then remembered what I had done.

Then my limbs healed, and I stopped caring about the dead Necromancer. My skin revitalized, turning from jerky into healthy strips of muscle and quite a bit of it too. Strangely my skin never formed, but his vanished.

His entire body melted into a sad little puddle, leaving behind only shining white bones in a loose brown robe. A spark lit inside of my mind, and with a wave of my newly muscled hand, the bones stood up. They stood up inside of the coat, and an shining ice-crystal blue filled the empty eyes sockets. It stood there, waiting for my command. A command I didn't know how to give.

Something in my mind sparked again, and soon the undead necromancer was leading the way out of the tomb. As we traveled out, I could feel vague recollections of memories that weren't mine. Memories that had once belonged to the corpse in front of me!

When we left, I waved my hand and a handful of skeleton warriors pulled themselves from the earths naked crust. They dropped to one knee, bowing before me. I could feel the thoughts that had been the necromancer's, and slowly I rifled through them until I knew two things.

His name, Konig Von Peters, and where we were. A country called… Sylvania. Instantly I knew much about this strange land, as magic drudged up memories that weren't mine. Along with these memories, I gained emotions. Twisted, dark emotions which I did my best to discard. The necromancer was not a good man, and the next time I looked at his hobbled skeleton form in those loose brown robes I broke him with a punch, scattering the bones into so much dust.

Finally, secure in my knowledge, and in my purpose, I looked towards the forests in the distance. They were nothing more than a light scattering of trees, but still I raised my hand over my heart and made a promise.

"I, Sakura Haruno, swear that I will do all in my power to fix this world. I will not sit idly by while my friends do all the work. If I die, it will be knowing that with my last breath I gave my all to this world. My world. My new home."

Magic thrummed as I spoke, and I could see the faintest wisps of it floating around me. Then it settled into the ground, and I could tell that something powerful had happened. The necromancers mind lacked any knowledge of this, and my own was hopeless for all things magical, but I could feel it. I could feel this sensation running through my veins (If I still had veins).

I was done being weak. I had made a promise, and some ancient force had accepted that vow. I would try not to disappoint it.

Then I walked towards the nearest town, the skeleton warriors following behind me.

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"Felix! We've got Orcs near the southern fields. Looks like an early raiding party came down from the Moutains! Come on or you'll miss all the fun!"

A boy with sandy-blonde hair jumped up and down excitedly, waving a cheap wooden sword and carrying a small pine buckler on his back. The boy couldn't have been more than five years old, and his eyes sparkled with a youthful excitement. He was talking to an older boy with hair as brown as mud, each strand a wild and untameable bramble. The boy sat on a log, chewing an end of sweet grass.

"Yeah?" He said, raising a lazy eyebrow. "Well, I suppose that is pretty far away. Sounds like too much hassle. Besides, mom would throw a fit if we went to another fight…"

The blond boy looked like someone had just told him they were going to shoot his puppy. The point of his cheap wooden sword dipped towards the ground, and his lip began to quiver.

Felix laughed, hopping off of the stump with an elflike grace. "Haha! I can't believe you actually fell for that! Come on, try and keep up. I'm not going to slow down just because you want to see a fight! Standard policy right?"

"I don't tell mom, and you let me shoot the bow?" Felix laughed again, scooping up a set of three woven bundles, each holding ten feathered shafts with hard iron points. In a single move he raised his bow, hidden behind the stump, and strung it.

"You wish! No, I let you come and you do what I say. Mom would throw a fit if you got hurt." He set off at a quick pace, with long legs that hungrily devoured the half-mile journey to the southern fields. His brother followed, each step followed by a loud thump as the wooden shield bounced off his back.

"Feliiiix! I can't keep up! Slow down!"

He skipped to a stop, twirling the drawn bow. "Come on Theodore! If you move this slowly you'll never even see the battle!" Their village lay in a hilly region, from their current spot he could see the southern fields. A dozen or so farmers stood in them, each armed with pitchforks or spears.

From the east, the town militia was ariving, each wearing a gleaming chestplate and carrying an elegant hand-and-a-half bastard sword, with a round buckler hanging off their shoulder. Velas Torbrind, the town militia captain was already ordering the farmers back while the real warriors formed their battle lines. His face was badly scarred from an Orc axe that took off half his nose, three of his teeth, and a significant chunk of his vision. But the injury had made him a cautious man, and nobody in the village was better at handling the Orcs. Except maybe for Felix.

Theodore finally caught up to his big brother, panting heavily from the long run. His little legs weren't exactly made for long-distance running. Sweat dripped off of his ratty mop of blond hair. "F-felix… Hah. Hah. How long… How long until… Until I can fight!"

Felix laughed, and the two brothers set off down the hill at a much slower pace. The battle wouldn't be starting for a while, the Orcs must still be figuring out who the boss was. That was the great thing about Orcs, they couldn't go fifteen minutes without re-establishing the pecking order. It made spotting them easy, and slowing them down even easier.

"Don't worry Theodore. The Orcs aren't going anywhere. You'll have plenty of time to build some strength into those arms before you need to fight. I'll start teaching you as soon as you can swing a real sword." The younger boy just looked at his wooden toy in disappointment. Finally he sighed, and sat on the grassy hilltop.

"Fiiine. Have fun, I guess." Theodore waved Felix off, and the brown-haired boy raced down the hill, skidding to a stop at the militia lines. Several soldiers greeted him with a hearty cheer, and a few even raised their swords in respect. It was only natural, everyone in the village knew Felix. They knew that he was the commanders favorite, despite his youth, and that within a few short years the preteen would become a commander in his own right (Even now, the villagers were stockpiling funds. Someday soon, young Felix -the bastard son of Theodore's deadbeat father- would be going to Officer's School in the Empire).

"Velas! How's the fight going?" He jovially greeted the commander, and that badly damaged face twisted into a warped attempt at a smile. The Orc axe, swung with all the ferocity of an Orc, had left a hand-sized chunk of scar tissue on his face, stretching over a now milky-white right eye and traveling down to the point of his chin. The left side of his face was still picture perfect, handsome enough to draw fair maidens from every corner of the empire.

Velas had transferred to this tiny town in the middle of nowhere, after the injury left him devoid of love. Everyone in town had grown used to his disfigurement, but every so often a stranger came by, and ran up to say hello after only seeing the left side. The look on their faces, while amusing, got tiring quickly. But he always loved seeing little Felix. That boy was going places, he'd bet the good half of his face on that.

"Hold off for a bit once it starts. You know the system." Though he said it, Velas knew that it was just repetition by this point. Felix knew every inch of the fight by heart. Sometimes it was scary to see such a young boy as such an accomplished killer.

"Let them reach combat. Wizards, officers, then the ones in the back." Any semblance of leadership in an Orc army was never more than a hairsbreadth away from infighting. Entire Orc armies had devolved into a brutal civil war, even while they were fighting someone else. Velas had once seen an army splinter into fifteen different factions, each trying to defeat the others with typical Orc sneakyness. All during the battle of Fellskar pass, while archers rained down thousands of arrows.

"And when shooting into combat?"

"Arc shots down, or move into a position to target the rear. Heads and spines only." Felix could make nearly any shot, but arrows took time to reach their opponent, and most would just bounce off the hard bones of an Orc. Head shots were worse. Even with the special Iron tips and a longbow ordered from the capital itself through an old arms dealer that owed Velas a favor, the bows odds of cracking through an Orc forehead was less than 20%. The easiest shots were those to the spine, throat, or eye. "Come on, Commander. I'm starting to think you don't trust me. You know I won't miss."

That gruesome face took on a pleasant smile. "Yeah yeah, I know. Look kid, you're a hell of a shot. Keep it up and there will be great things in your future." A hunting horn let loose three high bellows, and suddenly the Orcs that had been trying to stealthily sneak through the forest realized their cover was blown and charged.

Felix counted twenty-six. TWANG. Twenty-five. One in the rear dropped, an arrow shaft hanging out of its torn throat. An Orc could survive having their throat slashed, but the arrow had stuck it right in the spine, straight through its neck. A fatal blow for all but the most corrupted of creatures.

He took a deep breath, drew back on the bowstring, and as he exhaled the string TWANGED. Another arrow had found another Orc's neck. Felix didn't need to look to confirm this kill though, he only watched the first to ensure the wind wasn't ruining his shots.

TWANG TWANG TWANG

Twenty-one Orcs reached combat. Velas and the other militia met their charge on heavy shields, and instantly the farmers with their pitchforks and spears swept in around the sides. They crowded in on the Orcs, pricking and poking them but doing no real damage. An Orc could keep fighting with a spear jammed clean through its chest, something like a few flesh wounds wouldn't even register. But it kept the Orcs packed together, and made the Orcs in the rear of the unit antsy. It was in their nature. They needed to fight, and to have battle so close to them… It drove them nuts.

TWANG and the warboss dropped, an arrow sticking out of his eye-socket. He had stood more than two heads higher than the humans, an easy target. Orcs were usually bigger, taller, and stronger than the humans they fought. They were used to this being an advantage.

TWANG an Orc carrying a ratty green banner with two crossed fists on it hit the ground. An arrow had caught him in the open mouth.

"Oy! Stop pushin' yew gits!" "Shuddup, I's da boss now!" "Yew'n what army!" "Th's army!" And then a fistfight broke out in combat. Soon it engulfed the entire squad, which forgot about the humans there. Humans were something that Orcs did not consider a threat, and with their smartest member dead, they were about as smart as rabid dogs.

TWANG TWANG TWANG

Three more fell, predictably, and then the Militia charged the squabbling Orcs. Many were too busy fighting over the warboss's sword to recognize the threat. It was over in minutes, as devastating arrows killed any Orc who tried to take command, and the human soldiers carved through the rest with disturbingly accurate sword-strikes. Then they broke, and half the remaining Orcs ran for the forest.

TWANG TWANG TWANG TWANG TWANG

Shots fell like rain. Felix wasn't shooting for difficult targets anymore. He just aimed for spines. Big Orcs always ran in a straight line, hoping to escape. His attacks were non-fatal but crippling. Any Orc that ran was dropped with ease, until the fighting Orcs were looking over their shoulders every other second, trying to find a good time to run away.

If enough of their buddies ran with them, they'd survive right? Right?

It was psychological warfare at its finest, and against the simple-minded beasts that were the Orcs it was all too easy. The unit broke apart, bit by bit, and each one that ran was dropped easily. The last man standing, an Orc that was missing an arm and half a leg, was still looking over its shoulder as if trying to find a good time to run when a sword swept its head off.

A cheer went up among the humans, and a groan went up from the eleven paralyzed Orcs that were slowly crawling away into the forest. Felix was still far away, but it looked like three casualties among the militia. Not bad for twenty six dead Orcs.

Theodore cheered happily, swinging his tiny wooden sword and jumping happily.

Felix just half-turned, firing into the trees near his position. Twenty seven dead Orcs. The green beasts were getting smarter. They kept trying to send scouts after him. But the day an Orc archer killed him was the day he killed himself for being so damn stupid. This one had been well-hidden, but still too easy to spot. An Orc in camouflage, did wonders never cease?

Celebrating a good day of fighting, Felix unstrung his bow. He had to gather up Theodore and get back home. Otherwise mom would be worried.

Tenten just sighed, sometimes life was so much simpler. Like before she woke up as a boy. He raised his hand, shouting loudly as he left the battlefield. "How was my shooting lads!"

Even when they were out of sight, Felix could still hear the Militia shouting their reply. "TEN-OUT-OF-TEN!" His nickname, Tens, was already known across the dozen or so nearest villages. Felix knew that soon it would spread even further than that. Yes, the seeds had been sown for his future, and as soon as his companions heard that nickname, they would know who he was and how to find him.

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"You are a disgrace! Get out of my sight, and never dishonor our family again!" Cold and cruel, those ink-black eyes stared straight ahead. They looked over her, even as the Matron mother shrieked her displeasure. Not for a single instant would she allow her daughter to imagine that she was worthy of eye contact.

The nobility did not meet the eyes of the pleb.

"For the rest of your life you will guard the mines, day in and day out! Never again will you claim to be a member of the house of Dol'Anor, or the next time you see me it will be to have your eyes and tongue put out!"

Ino looked at the floor, her head bowed in submission. She knew that if she looked up, the threat would be carried out. She did not speak to defend herself, if she tried to speak the flesh would be whipped off her back on principle alone. After which, she would be delivered, bleeding and broken, to the torturers for an evenings entertainment.

"If you so much as cross my sight again, I will have you stripped and thrown to the slaves!" Madam Dol'Anor turned and strode from the room, leaving only a deathly silence to fill the room. Ino moved quickly to leave, knowing that the being she called mother might just return solely for the thrill of carrying out her threat.

Ino was the youngest of her line, with three elder sisters. As such, she had been given the most leeway, if only because nobody cared about her. She was a trophy, to some day be sold off to a husband of a minor noble family. A tool to ensure her family prospered.

What had her crime been? What horrendous act had she performed that had seen her stricken from the lines of nobility in all but title and condemned to the long days of work in the mine? She had spoken kindly with a servant, and one of her mothers' guards had seen.

So she entered the mines, the last of her property slung over her back in a threadbare sack. She wore her only clothing, a set of fabrics beneath her armor to prevent chafing and pinching. A shirt of chainmail, emblazoned with the Dol'Anor emblem. Armored leggings and greaves of black metal, each predictably stamped with the family emblem. Arm and hand guards, with the emblem stamped into the back of each hand. She was given no helmet, nor did she expect to receive one.

Even in this pit of filth and misery, she was given command. Placed in charge of a job she knew nothing about, with no warning to the man she replaced, or to the other soldiers on guard duty. If work slowed for even a single day, she knew that her mother would be back with blood on her mind. So she strode into that labor camp like the baddest bitch in all of hell, venom flying from her tongue and punishments flying from her whip as quickly as she could give them.

For the first few months, she struggled to handle everything. Ino worked slaves to death, she beat some to death. Her men took out their frustrations on the slaves, and killed many many more. But she could do nothing. Ino spent her Thirteenth birthday sitting in her room with blood on her hands, memories of the human child she had doomed to death in the pits when she killed the girls mother for not working hard enough.

Day after day she worked, talking to the slaves only when she was certain of their loyalties. After all, it was the rare slave who would not sell out a Dark Elf in the hopes of earning another loaf of stale bread. Slowly but surely she grew to know some, and they learned to act their wildest when she was around… The strongest did, at any rate. Those who could handle it, and who received food and water while they recovered.

A year passed like this. Then another. Soon the house of Dol'Anor had a new child, and they forgot all about the daughter that was weak.

Ino woke with a smile on her face, a genuine smile. It was the first she could remember donning since her banishment, and it felt so very good. She left her quarters, and her second in command greeted her with a salute. A spy for her mother, Ino felt great pleasure when she drove her sword through his neck. Killing her own kind wasn't supposed to bring her such bliss, but after seeing years of Dark Elf cruelty she had grown to hate her own species.

Hiding his body, Ino immediately began to sound the alarm bells, locking down the entire mining complex. It was a system put in place to stop slave revolts, and all the slaves were immediately locked away while her families militia was gathered to help put down the revolt. It was an hours run to the palace, and Ino would have to hurry if she wanted to outpace the finest troops her family possessed.

While runners told her mother that the mine was suffering an unknown revolt, Ino was slitting the throats of the gate guards, carving their flesh with a homemade shiv and strewing entrails around the entryway.

When her mother summoned the heads of her guard to gather their troops, Ino was gathering the Dark Elves under her command, packing them into the leisure room. By the time the Dol'Anor soldiers were heading to assist, the room had burned, along with every elf inside of it.

And when the troops arrived, they saw the slaughtered corpses of their brethren outside of opened gates. Forming up into five twenty man units, they stormed into the empty prison, with only a single unit waiting outside. Each warrior carried a sword and buckler, with a poisoned crossbow across their back. They could fight like demons, and were some of the finest sharpshooters in the Dark Elf lands.

But confidence was a dagger, and Ino felt nothing but delight when she plunged it into the hearts of her kin. Three squads were too preoccupied with the escaped slaves to notice that the floor was covered in lamp oil. The last squad noticed too late. Eighty hardened elf warriors entered the prison. Seven escaped the flames.

Seven ran out of the cave, coughing smoke, blinking tears from their eyes, and nursing horrific burns. They ran out onto a field strewn with the corpses of their companions, as an army of slaves stood facing them with 'liberated' crossbows.

An hour later, Ino politely opened the door of her ancestral home, while the house of Dol'Anor burned around her. With a grin that stubbornly refused to leave her face, she shot her eldest sister in the face with a crossbow bolt.

"Mooooother! I'm hooooOOOOOOoooome! Aren't you going to throw me to the slaves?" Demented laughter filled the halls, her mother hiding even as the flames devoured her body, too scared of her daughter to even whimper as the flames charred her bones to ash.

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Shino lay on the ethereal plane, panting heavily. All of his power, carefully sequestered since he first came into existence three years ago, had been spent. It was all he could do to maintain his body in the land of the Gods. Already he could feel power flowing into his body, the fire of his followers beliefs as millions of insects left offerings and prayers.

Woefully, insects were not humans. They were too small to provide him with great amounts of energy, even given their tremendous numbers. His entire congregation provided him with the power of three minor barbarian tribes. It was enough to slowly grow, but if any of the other Gods took notice of him, they could scatter his mentality on the five winds. He would reform, but it would take time, and a great deal of it at that.

Fortunately, the Twelve Empirical Kings were currently in pitched battle with the Gods of Chaos, pushing their advantage now that Nurgle had lost his favorite sneaky weapon. The Thirteenth Rat was slinking somewhere around the conflict, looking to extract its pound of flesh from Nurgle after the walking pus-ball corrupted its rats.

On the planes of desolation they attacked Chaos, cutting down dozens of minor gods which swarmed across the field. Each barbarian tribe had their own slew of gods, and while they provided MAYBE enough faith energy to manifest a single deity every ten years, there were thousands of tribes. It was an ideological purging, and with every blast of potent magical power a handful of tribal gods were scattered. Or one of the Twelve would loose a tiny sliver of might.

All the minor Chaos Gods in the highest plane combined were not powerful enough to so much as SCRATCH even the weakest of the Twelve Empirical Kings (Stromfels, King of Storms and Sharks). And each of the Twelve carried potent weapons of faith. Sigmar swung his hammer, and no less than a bakers dozen of foreign gods were scattered upon the winds. He drank deeply of their lost magical power, but so did the other minor Chaos deities.

For in the end, Chaos was a horde of parasites. They devoured each other as often as they did the Twelve. The Great Four Chaos Gods stood around the battlefield, watching everything like demonic chess masters. Their aspects littered the field, minor embodiments of a single trait they possessed, determined to steal as much power from the dead/damaged gods as could be taken.

The god of Poxes, an embodiment of Nurgle, latched onto Sigmar for a handful of seconds. It used that time to steal millions of prayers worth of faith. Then it's skull was split by his hammer, and Sigmar took perhaps half of his power back. The rest had already been drawn into Nurgle, who used it to create ten more embodiments just like the Pox god that had been destroyed.

Shino could see the fight. All of the Gods could. There was no such thing as stealthy combat in the Ethereal lands. When any two Gods fought, the entire world was privy to the match. Seeing all the power tossed around by the major battle between global powers of the spiritual land, Shino licked his lips. It would be so easy to pick off one of the minor gods, each of them was near his power level, some funneling all of their powers into just maintaining their bodies. He could kill one and vanish before they noticed him…

But then he would be on the Chaos Gods radar, and that would be very bad. Needless to say, he could not win a fight against them and hope to survive, nor did he have allies willing to protect him. However, Shino did have friends among the Gods, and it was these that he visited now as they all shared in the spectacle of the battle.

Shino walked into the hub of inherences. He was fairly short and nondistinct, looking like a vague black blob that slowly coalesced into a humanoid shape with two shimmering mirror-like discs as his eyes. Clothes of the same fizzy black blob that made up his body appeared, creating the vague outline of a high-necked coat around his body.

Kurnous sat in a corner, slowly fuming as he watched the battle grow. He was an Elder God, the primordial leader of the Beastmen and the first to create them. His species had been bastardized, his powers stolen, and now new gods governed the Beastmen. Not to mention what happened to his Elvish children. No other God hated Chaos more.

His head was that of a deer, and his feet were cloven like a goat. His body was trim and muscular, with elegant blue tattoos across his arms and face. Shino said nothing to him, for Kurnous did not want to be talked to, nor did he want to talk. A god in name alone, Hatred festered wildly in his heart.

Once he would have joined the fight against Chaos. But few believers remained for him, and any ounce of lost power was limiting his life. When it was all gone… He wouldn't have enough believers left to revive. He would simply fade away and be another lost God along the rocky road of eternity.

Vostenwald and Kurkistvand sat on a metaphorical imagination of a table. A minor construct that cost nothing to create and had no real substance to it, but allowed Gods to interact with it as if it were a real object.

Both of them were Nature Gods, beings based off principles of respect and faith, rather than prayer. Vostenwald was the spirit of the ancient forest, now spanning across large swathes of the Empire. Kurkistvand was the soul of Athel Loren, the very body of the forest. Each was worshipped by the trees and spirits of the region, and their bodies reflected their nature.

Both were wooden humanoids with soft, defined features crafted from bark. Kurkistvand was tall and slender, while Vostenwald was a literal giant. Both gestured in tandem for Shino to join them, crafting a chair at the table for him. These two wooden Gods had grown from the same original entity, a now dead primordial God. As such, they acted in tandem most of the time. Fortunately, they were both neutral parties, content to idle for an eternity and respond to any attack, though they would not be leading any attacks. Their power alone kept them safe from Chaos.

The last member of this band of ignored deities was Ikorakanake, the God of Desert Storms and Sunrises. Another solemn, social being, she was the God of the Dark Lands before they fell to Chaos, and the lands of Khemri before the humans of the region created new Gods. Wherever sentient beings looked upon the vast looming desert and felt a twinge of fear in their hearts, she drew power. For an eternity she sat on the sidelines, and at this point few Gods (even the Primordials which had been around as long as she had) remembered that she even existed.

It may bee easy to find a God who was fighting. But a God who desired to be simply left alone could be difficult to find. Particularly when nobody knew their name.

Iko, as she was called, sat with her eyes closed as a hum filled her soul. It was the hum of hot winds caressing tent flaps. She was an elegant human woman with large sand-brown eyes and a scattering of sunspots across her face. Her hands were weathered and wrinkled, as if they belonged on an old woman, but her eyes were filled with such bright fire that none would ever believe she was old.

Shino waved to her as well, and was again ignored. They sat there in silence, watching the battle turn into a week long magical fight. Then a month. Then a year. Soon the war was old news and the battle ended with no real winners. Though, the Thirteenth Rat getting a tasty chunk out of Nurgle was a pretty amusing sight to see.

Knowing that his power would not return for many many years, Shino relaxed in this forgotten corner of divinity. Here, he was among companions (If not exactly friends) and he knew that while none of these Gods would defend him, neither would they attack him. And so, he twiddled his metaphorical thumbs and dreamed of the day where he too could tear a chunk out of chaos.

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In the Mountains of Mourn, the only thing that mattered was power. Hundreds of mountains stuck up towards the sky like stiletto daggers, creating a terrain of endlessly overlapping passes, each plastered in eternal snow. The mountains reached such high peaks, that it was impossible to find one without snow on some part of it, no matter the time.

The weak races of the world could not survive these lands. The snows were cruel, sucking the strength from blood faster than any vampire. The mountains were as steep as they were treacherous, and they were very steep indeed. But the denizens of this inhospitable place were by far the worst.

Grots, the lowest of the low. Little more than a midday snack for everything that called the mountain range home. Hideous knee-high green beasts that look like a goblins inbred cousin. They were capable of intelligence, if only because the dumb ones had all been eaten. When they fought, they swarmed, and the only fighting a Grot knew was dirty fighting. The smartest of their kind could build traps, and the terrain surrounding a Grot cave was likely filled with leg destroying traps. They didn't want to kill their prey, after all… When things died they lost their flavor.

Ogres. The highest of highs, and the bitterest of lows. This race had seen it all. They fought for unity, to survive against the largest threats on the mountains. They fought to split, so that large-scale disasters wouldn't destroy them all. An avalanche would always kill more Ogres than a Tundra behemoth, and the beast they could at least fight! Above all they fought to survive. Hunger was their wake-up call each morning, and the days events all revolved around food. Because without food, all the strength in the world was worth precisely nothing.

Each Ogre stood twice as tall as a man, and they grew much larger than that. Some believe that Giants are simply Ogres who forgot to stop growing. Ogres are immensely wide about the midsection, nearly as broad in the shoulders as a human lying flat upon the ground, and wider still at the gut. They can snap a tree with a single hand, and chew solid blocks of marble. Their skin is hardened from an eternity of brutal weather, and as deep as a thumb. Given their strength, power, and toughness, it comes as great surprise to all but the most well-informed that Ogres are a common source of food for all the beasts of the mountains.

In the Mountains of Mourn, even Ogres are tiny. Massive beasts shake the earth, and they have more than adapted to the horrific weather. The nights are dark and cold, and when the wind howls even the mighty Ogres find caverns for shelter. Many a time an Ogre pack awakens after a storm to discover that several of their kind have been dragged off into the night without a sound.

In the highest peak of the region, a single Ogre greeted the rising sun with a mighty roar! His muscles rippled in the cold weather, and where other Ogres had a healthy layer of fat covering their body, this Ogre had only muscles stacked upon muscles, stacked upon more muscles. This strange Ogre -the deviant Leader- as his tribe called him, looked out across the world as the first touch of sun covered it. He looked out upon the vast mysterious world with eyes full of flames.

The sight filled him with a strange sense of fullness, as he confirmed for the first time in three years that there were no taller peaks in the Mountains of Mourn. He had finally reached the highest point in all the land. There was only one thing left to do.

He leaned back on the high mountain peak, tipped his head back, and shook the world with his shout. A shout that caused no less than six avalanches. A shout heard from as far away as the Dark Lands. A shout to let his allies know that he was there, that he was fine, and that he was finally ready to leave the desolate mountain ranges.

A shout of- "YOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOUTH!"

Below, a thousand Ogres tipped their heads back and bellowed the same strange war shout. Across the Mountains of Mourn, dozens of isolated Ogre tribes carried the call. From their calls, the shout spread as far as Cathay to the far east, and it resonated deep into the Chaos-held lands. Every Ogre who heard it readied for war, each flocking to the banner of the "Brilliant Green Beast". He who sounded the call of youth.

Each of the Ogre tribes knew of the mysterious deviant, this Ogre who did not act as Ogre's did, and who unified the many many many Ogre tribes by punching their leaders in the face. Each tribe believed that this call represented a turning point for the Ogres as a race. That now, they would sweep across the world and finally accomplish their destiny.

So much faith was placed on that mighty bellow, that far away on the ethereal plane, a being formed from nothing. A human with sleek green skin, and a broad white smile. A figure that promptly gave a thumbs up.

"Ahaha! Someone has been quite Youthful today!"

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Sor'Careanth had been there during the first daemonic incursion. His sword, writhing and screaming in the sheath across his back, had tasted blood across every continent. There was no sentient race upon the surface of the planet that he had not dueled, and no Warrior had ever challenged him and lived to tell the tale.

Gigantic wings stirred anxiously upon his back, as he walked through the darkest lands of the Realm of Chaos. Strange happenings were afoot, and the Demon Prince of Khorne had ventured out to investigate. A millenia had passed since Sor'Careanth had worn the body of a human, but he retained enough knowledge to venture out alone. For he knew that an army would miss things that one would not.

The winds of magic were strange in this land, they poured forth from the portal in their most potent state, but recently there was a massive power drain in this region. An absolutely massive drain, equivalent to an entire Demonic army. Yet the four Great Gods were silent. Someone was making a play for power… Or someone was trying to steal the magic of the portal.

Either way, he would find out which. Sor'Careanth lurked in the shadows as he explored the despoiled lands of Chaos, a barren rocky wasteland where no food would ever grow, populated only by lesser demons that wandered in search of prey. Demons would feast upon each other just as readily as humans, and a Daemonic Prince such as he was a juicy target for any number of wild animals.

One of the eldest Demons on the planet, he had no concerns about animals. Though they might attack him, all the beasts in this desolate region could not hope to ingest all of his power, and as such they could not hope to kill him.

For days he scoured the rocky lands, searching for something he did not fully understand. The power drain had vanished, only to return a few hours later, just as it always did. It was the fluctuations that made all of this entirely too suspicious, and in his curiosity Sor'Careanth did not see the first step of the trap.

Pain flashed through his immortal body, crippling, agonizing pain the likes of which he had not felt since his duel with the elven council of mages two-thousand years ago. Then the sharp steel of a demonic blade slid into his neck, and the millenia old Daemon Prince died.

He died seeing a swirling trio of sleek black dots, set on a blood-red orb.

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BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM! That is how you do it! Hello and goodbye~

End of chapter, hope you enjoyed it! Now you know where everyone is, and what they're up to. I'm not planning to revisit these characters for a while, so enjoy. From here on out our focus will be on Naruto and his adventures.


	8. The Slumbering

Chapter 8

So I've had some interesting conversations with one of my favorite reviewers here. Mostly related to the world building and Naruto's future. What weapon do you all think Naruto should use when he eventually rises to the leader of a grandiose army. My personal preference is a Raven's Beak Maul, but this reviewer suggested a Greatsword.

If you have a weapon you want to toss into the mighty magical hat of story suggestions, feel free. Just be sure to justify anything you suggest. ANYTHING is fair game, as long as it is suitably justified!

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"One. Two. Three. PULL!" Naruto had led his fellow tribesmen to retrieve the armor, and throwing that dead form at Azath's feet had been one of the proudest moments of his life. When Azath told him, and the other, what they had to do next… That was less proud.

He dug his hands in, pulling with all his might. The other village men helped, grabbing handfulls of the sinewy black material. Slime dripped from the seams where flesh met armor, and the ropelike flesh slipped from more than one pair of hands. Naruto was standing a few feet away from the suit of armor, and six village women worked hard to hold the heavy body down. His heels pushed hard against the sand, and suddenly, with a sickening SQUELCH, the corpse plopped out of its armor.

The Slaanesh warrior had been an imposing, nightmarish figure in life. A voice that oozed with rich seduction, on a body that twirled a massive greatsword with but a single hand. It was terror personified, and dripping with sex.

Now, as a rope-like black puddle dried beneath the suns rays, this strange demonic being was simply pathetic. Its body was a tangled mop of hair, thick cables filling the chestplate, tiny filaments hooking into the armor for mobility and attachment. The liquid that had filled the armor spilled out across the ground, a shimmery grey slime that no right-minded person would ever want to touch.

Naruto wiped his hands on his clothes. The slime still stuck to his fingers, stubbornly hanging on until the sun dried it and it flaked away in thick cloudy clumps. "This thing is beyond disgusting! Old Man, we yanked the corpse out, what do you want now!"

Said old man sat in the shade of his awning, scraping the helmet clean. He had made some interesting discoveries while pulling the 'head' of the warrior free. The Slaanesh disciples did have organs, but they were small, and hard to find. Likely augmented by magic. Their eyes were one of their few real organs, and they were connected to the centermost wrap of Slaanesh 'Flesh'. Azath had to use a chisel to chip out these cords of flesh, though the slime came out easily when it dried.

With a finishing blow, he proclaimed the helmet clean. Then he tossed it to the pile of armor, and met Naruto's excited gaze. "Naruto. Our tribe is faced with the greatest threat in our history. Slaanesh will attack us for certain, and the will certainly outnumber us. To defeat them, you will have to push your body beyond every limit you have. If you cannot do that, we will have to flee into the mountains, and hope that we survive long enough to rebuild our village."

Naruto met the intense gaze with one of his own, ignoring the shriveled corpse of the Slaanesh warrior. "You should know by now, old man. I don't have any limits. What do I have to do?"

Azath shook his head, the fire of youth never failed to amuse him. Still, this was not some simple challenge. "You are going to put on this suit of armor. It will try to destroy your mind and claim your body, as you are not one of Slaanesh. You will have to defeat it in a battle of wills, and make its magic your own. Follow me inside."

Inside of his hut, the rest of the women had dug a large pit in the ground, six feet deep and eight feet long. Azath stood by it, and Naruto looked into the deep dirt grave with fire in his eyes.

"This will not be easy Kveldulf. If you are scared, you will fail. If you are hesitant, you will fail. If you doubt yourself, the armor will break you, and we will leave you within this pit forever."

When Azath looked back, Naruto was already sliding into the armor. It was heavy, as if made entirely of lead. It was too big for him, and his limbs hung loosely in joints that still stunk of the dead Slaanesh warrior and its slimy body fluids. Still, without a word to anyone around him, Naruto crawled into the pit, and the helmet was placed over his head.

"You are brave, young Kveldulf." Azath said, as he placed a long hollow tube in the young boys mouth. "Breathe slow. Breathe deep. When the transformation is complete, we will set you free. Now be at peace, and have faith. The magicks of Slaanesh are no match for a warriors soul."

Then the first dirt fell on his body, as Naruto was entombed beneath the earth.

He was only distantly aware of things. The earth around him was cool, a welcome relief from the endless heat. It engulfed his body, swallowing him, but rather than panic he felt only peace. They had asked him to believe in himself. To face a God in a battle of wills and come out on top. This was a battle he could win, and no matter what the outcome was, it relied entirely on him.

Naruto had been fighting that way his entire life. He would do so again with glee, and win or lose, he would give his all.

There was no sense of time in that tomb beneath the earth, simply a vague impression that every second was an hour but every hour was only an instant. There was nothing to see, and so he slept. At times he could hear voices, those that traveled down his breathing tube and echoed through his skull, but they were muted and hard to understand. He could smell only the rich aroma of the soil, filling the space around his nose.

But he could feel everything. Tiny scraps of dirt that had fallen into his armor dragged at his skin. The armor touched him with its lingering chill, and as time passed he could feel it touching him more eagerly. He understood that the armor was not truly armor. It was a demon, bound in a form. A demon made from a tiny sliver of Slaanesh, a minuscule portion of the Chaos God's true power.

'Hello. You are not Haraka'Hor.' He could feel the armor inside of his mind, touching things. It was molesting his soul, and as the tainted touch of invisible fingers slid across the deepest part of his being, Naruto recoiled.

'Do not touch me, foul beast! I do not serve your master.' He struck a psychic blow against the demonic armor, and for a moment he felt its shadowy soul separate from his own. Then it was back, encircling him. Drowning him in darkness.

'I am not some minor being, to be forced aside by brute strength. You are but a child compared to one such as I. Let me see what lies within your being.' The fingers of shadow that had enveloped his soul pressed against his chest. Then they were pressing into his chest, digging through his very soul as they sought out something within.

Naruto screamed, striking back with imaginary blows, raining fire and hate and rage against the demonic armor that even now sifted through his soul. The shadow shivered, but did not withdraw. 'Ohhhh, I almost felt that one. Try again. With feeling, we adore a good feeling…'

His screams echoed up the tube, but none were there to hear his voice. They had left the boy to his spiritual battle, aware that a warrior needed privacy for battles of the soul. It was the weakest moment a warrior could have, and a stranger viewing that was a direct insult to all that they stood for.

Naruto screamed his throat raw, but it did nothing. His body was caked in sweat from fighting the demon, and all he had done was exhaust himself. The demon never even slowed its rape of his soul. Now he wracked his mind for an idea, a thought. Anything that might help. He wondered if maybe he could-

'No no, that won't help. That would be a waste of both our times… And there are Sooo many more things I'd rather do with My time.' The demon spoke, but its voice now came from inside of his mind. He could feel the dark soul crawling inside of his own, and his mind fell back on the twisted ropy monstrosities he had yanked out of the armor.

'I won't let you do that to me! You aren't going to win this!'

The demon laughed. 'Oh sweet naive little child… I've already started.'

Naruto screamed, throwing everything he had against the demon, but all it did was draw another sickening cackle from the monster. Then his throat cracked, and Naruto bit down on his lip until blood flowed down his throat.

'This is my body! You can't have it!'

'Such quaint Hypocrisy. You stepped into my body first. Foolish little mortal. To compete in a battle of wills against a GOD!'

He raged, and roared, and fought with every ounce of willpower he had. But he was a warrior of the fist, not a warrior of the soul. Naruto had never had to fight using only his mind, and he could not even begin to comprehend how to wield his own soul as a weapon.

'You are going to be my puppet for an eternity boy! And the first thing I am going to do is Slaughter your village! I think I'll even let you watch… As I take my vengeance on them all, and my pleasure on the rest.'

Dark laughter filled his mind, and Naruto could feel his own soul starting to fade away, devoured by the demonic being. He couldn't think any more. All he could do was lie there, thinking of all the people he let down while the demon enjoyed the last scraps of victory.

In a state of numbness, he drifted for an eternity. Unfeeling, unthinking. Staring into the dirt with eyes that could not see, hearing only the faintest mocking laughter in his mind.

Then… something. He couldn't understand it, but he felt a strange warmth rising in his body. The dark laughter caught a hitch, and lessened for a single moment. Naruto could feel again, if only for an instant.

He was still buried in the cold ground, breathing through a wooden tube as a demon infested his soul and turned him into something monstrous. But through the tube, inbetween his breaths, he could hear a sound.

It sounded like singing.

Then the demon was back, digging its claws painfully into his soul. White hot fire tore through his veins, and he could feel the shadow crawling down his veins. But that moment where he stopped the demon, it drove the monster to new heights of sadism. A good fight always riled the blood of demons.

'Oh. Still got a little Fight left! Yes! Give me everything you have! It only makes your inevitable loss all the sweeter. This is my body, you can't beat me here!'

Naruto was tired. So very tired. But if there was one thing he hated, it was being told that he didn't have a chance. His mind latched onto part of the demon's rant, it was the demon's body. But the demon was inside of HIS body… Picking apart his mind from the- From the inside out!

His eyes snapped into focus, as the cackling demon slid its venemous soul through Naruto, rotting away his soul piece by piece. Only to stop, when it felt something sliding inside of it.

'You've been picking me apart from the inside out. Now lets see whats inside of you!' Naruto plunged his soul into the demon, pushing into its mind, and into the very center of its being. He could feel its thoughts, its desires, but most of all he could feel its fears.

'N-no! Get out of me! You cannot enter my soul, I'm already inside of yours!' It tore wildly at Naruto, carving deep furrows of agonizing pain through his soul. But he ignored it all, as he wrought havoc on the ancient demon's mind. He tugged at memories, expunged countless depraved desires, and finally latched onto the very things that could make a Demon afraid.

Weakness, and Naruto sank his teeth into it like a starving man. 'Well well well, if I didn't know any better I'd say you were scared. A big bad demon, terrified of a child. Loosing a fight to A CHILD. The others must think you're so pathetic. So ugly.' He could feel the darkness shaking as he dug his hands deeper and deeper into the pit of its soul. For Naruto had seen a glimpse of the one thing the spirits of Slaanesh feared more than anything else. Their own memories.

'I give you one chance Demon. Submit.'

'Never! Your soul will be mine! You may think you are powerful human but I am-' Naruto's mental defenses fell apart, feeble though they were, and the entity of Darkness found itself wandering through Naruto's memories. In his blindness, Naruto had thought that these made up his soul, and only now did he realize that the soul ran deeper than experiences. He had abandoned his soul, allowing the Demon to do whatever it wanted to him.

He knew he could survive it. Nothing this feeble creature of hate and darkness did to him could destroy him. Naruto knew himself too well to think that. But while the Demon crawled through Naruto's head, he was fishing for every memory the Demon had… From the time when it was human.

'Wow, you've been around a loooong time.' He could feel the dark soul squirming, trying to protect its memories. But they went on for so long. For too long, and even though the Demon abandoned its attack in a desperate bid to protect its past, Naruto eventually pried out the secrets.

'You were hideous. A disgusting excuse for human. I've seen Chaos Goblins twice as fuckable as you!' Typically Naruto was above mocking his opponents bedroom prowess, but this was no time for modesty. He had to break this beast, and the more he dove into its memories, the more he understood it. The more he knew, the more he could hurt it.

'Liar!' It hissed, but its soul shook beneath his onslaught. That was the problem with living for an eternity… You eventually forgot your past, loosing it in the deepest part of your mind until even YOU couldn't find it. The Demon was incredibly skilled in the mental arts, but even it couldn't find those ancient memories

Finding the memories was perhaps even worse than when its foe did. Finding them meant remembering, and that was one thing it sorely did not want to do. Image was everything to the beasts of Slaanesh. They lived for their looks, died for their looks, and sold their souls for beauty. The suit of armor, gilded and perfect, a vast hue of colors- The bright purple that only the Nobility wore! There was no greater treasure for a lesser demon.

But as it dragged away one wretched moment after another, the Dark soul shook and splintered. Every time the soul broke, psychic pain wracked it, and its mind destabilized a little bit more. Had it tried in the beginning, it could have broken Naruto's soul just as easily… But breaking and assimilating are two different processes, and assimilating takes far longer. It is a slow and gradual process, not something that can be rushed for all but the strongest of Demons.

Now it was paying for its folly. Its mental strength, sapped from the endless surge of horrible memories. A childhood of pain and misery. A deformed face. A young love, fawning over another with perfect skin… A typhoon of pain, rage, and anger that slowly tore it apart.

Naruto could feel the Demon breaking, and fed into that. He shoved one unpleasant memory after another into it, all the while whispering the things it feared the most. 'That woman knew what you were. That's why she abandoned you. That's why she rejected you. She knew your soul was just as fucked up as you are!'

The Demon shook, and Naruto slowly recognized that it was crying. Then it slowly broke apart, falling away into nothing. The Darkness vanished, and Naruto could feel his own body again.

He sighed in relief, only to realize that his lungs weren't working. He could feel his body only in a sense, it was like every inch of his skin had fallen asleep, and he couldn't reconnect with it. He tried to move his soul, pushing it back into his body, but he didn't have enough of a soul left to regain control. The demon was dead, but that thought was anything but calming now that his body was paralyzed.

Naruto struggled to push his own soul back into its proper place, he fought as hard as he ever had. In the abstract sense he could feel the oxygen deprivation setting in, though he felt it as if it was happening to another person. He fought to regain control, fighting and fighting and fighting… It reminded him of his fight with the Demon. A haze was sliding over his mind, when Naruto realized the solution.

He stopped trying to push into his body, and imagined himself already there, simply connecting to the rest of his soul. Something slid together, like the perfect puzzle piece, and then he was gasping for air in his coffin beneath the soil.

But his soul was permanently warped. His body changed. His fingers flexed and flowed strangely, and his legs felt like noodles. "Ha-gh…" Naruto had tried to shout into the breathing tube, only for his throat to crack. He waited a little longer, letting his vocal chords relax before trying again. "Hey." It was weak, too soft to hear, like Hinata back when he had first met her.

Footsteps thumped on the ground, and eager voices shouted things he couldn't quite hear. Naruto relaxed against the floor, the fact that someone had been listening sticking in his mind. It reminded him of the singing, the singing that slowed the demon and gave him a fleeting shot at victory. Naruto vowed to repay whoever it was, then his eyelids were too heavy to keep open and he gave in to the sleep.

For the first time in three days, Naruto slept.

BREAKBREAKBREAKBREAKBREAK

End of Chapter?

So I'm actually pretty unsure about this chapter. Hence why it's going up now, at 3K words instead of the 5-7 I was going for. Let me know what you think, and after my exams on Thursday I will re-upload, with various modifications made. If you enjoyed it, there will just be more added. If you disliked it, then I'll go with one of my other ideas for this scenario.


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